Muskrat's Howl to Prayer





Sometime in 1951, after a 6 day Snodgrass binge, Jacob the Muskrat wrote the poem he is best known for. The most famous passage is shown below


Muskrat Howl Part 1
by Jacob Muskrat

For Carl Muskrat

I saw the best muskrats of my generation destroyed by alligators, fleeing, hysterical, dragging their emaciated winter bodies through the Monte Negro wetlands at dawn, looking for an angry mix of reeds and grasses.
Furry headed rodents, pining for the safe warmth of their ancestral lodges, in the celestial still of icy winter,
who, shivering and bony sat on hindquarters nibbling on snodgrass in the alien calm of night,
and climbed high atop snow whited hills
sniffing frozen air and contemplating crickets,
Who pushed teeth to twig and paw to mud and head to ground under quarter moon and saw the angelic form of the Great Muskrat dancing on the Earthen roofs from lodge to lodge by starlight,
who pranced through Coyote Den and python nest wide eyed dreaming Siberia and Rodentine sonnets among the shadows of predator...