Poetry Monday

The Museum of Comparative Zoology


by L. E. Sissman


Struck dumb by love among the walruses 
And whales, the off-white polar bear with stuffing 
Missing, the mastodons like muddy buses, 
I sniff the mothproof air and lack for nothing.

A general grant enabled the erection, 
Brick upon brick, of this amazing building. 
Today, in spite of natural selection, 
It still survives an orphan age of gilding.

Unvarnished floors tickle the nose with dust
Sweeter than any girls' gymnasium's;
Stove polish dulls the cast-iron catwalk's rust;
The soot outside would make rival museums

Blanch to the lintels. So would the collection.
A taxidermist has gone ape. The cases
Bulging with birds whose differences defy detection
Under the dirt are legion. Master races

Of beetles lie extinguished in glass tables: 
Stag, deathwatch, ox, dung, diving, darkling, May. 
Over the Kelmscott lettering of their labels, 
Skeleton crews of sharks mark time all day.

Mark time: these groaning boards that staged a feast 
Of love for art and science, since divorced, 
Still scantily support the perishing least 
Bittern and all his kin. Days, do your worst:

No more of you can come between me and 
This place from which I issue and which I 
Grow old along with, an unpromised land 
Of all unpromising things that live and die.

This brick ark packed with variant animals -- 
All dead -- by some progressive-party member 
Steams on to nowhere, all the manuals 
Of its calliope untouched, toward December.

Struck dumb by love among the walruses
And whales, the off-white polar bear with stuffing
Missing, the mastodons like muddy buses,
I sniff the mothproof air and lack for nothing.