Mouse

He knew the smell he pushed his fingers into the earth and dug and dug the surface of the ground. He clawed into the carcass and pulled the dead one out of the grave threw his arms around its neck its eyelids had rotted its eye sockets were full of earth no skin remained on the cheekbones and the soft tissue of the lips the mice had eaten. He shook it hard in the empty bowl of the skull something stirred - a beetle leapt out from the hollow of the palate - and a rustling came he pricked up his ear and grasped the coded verses - his mate was speaking to him. Moonlight over the leaves of the acacias and the ivy of the square was spreading from the watered grass the legs of couples were growing damp and hands were seeking - in the cold shiver of the night - the warmth of another hand - silent and longing. In a corner of the square a heavy, dry, cold body writhed and the wind flung the smell of rotting flesh as far as the distant alleys of the city. On the grass no longer did any foot glide before the astonished eyes of people behind the windowpanes, in a corner of the square the blind dancer danced with passion with his dead one, alone all, all alone...