Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Scientists have discovered a gene which helps explain why some people are driven to drink by stress. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich have conducted an experiment on
normal mice and a mutant strain lacking a gene called CRH 1… (The Daily Express, May 3 2002)

Group A, the mutant mice, have cheese
and traps and small bright (blood shot?) eyes,
and tails that flick as they sashay around
their cage. They prop up bars,

the mutant mice, have charm and wit,
are the life and squeaking soul of parties,
the clowns that dance first, leave last
and can’t ever reject that tantalizing another one?

Group A are destined to sit on benches and rant
at the frowns of the passing crowd, to fall down stairs,
get into fights, shag the wrong mouse
and puke up their tiny mouse-sized guts.

But don’t be harsh, they never stood a chance,
it’s in the genes you see: two groups of mice
ordinary fun loving mice, the kind that prefer cocaine…
there they are scuttling to the loo, their eyes

so wide and happy and alive… Two groups of mice,
… as if they might talk and dance forever…
Two groups of mice, the kind that like
an occasional rave, a nine week bender,

two groups of mice were offered the choice
of alcohol or water – and 8% (a bit of a kick)
was mostly what they picked, until, until,
they were exposed to what we in scientific circles,

like to know as stress: an attack by an unfamiliar mouse,
some were forced to swim. And, slowly, yes,
life got back to normal, a gin and tonic,
an 8 percenter each night when they got in,

until dreaming always of those strange familiar faces,
huge and gleeful at the edges of their world,
the mutants slid and cracked: wanting, loving,
needing three times more than those with that crucial gene –

and, what can I say, after six months, they were,
what we in scientific circles, call a mess,
their behaviour complicated, hard to track,
they were always late and never phoned,

and working still, thinking this will make my name
as light creeps up the laboratory wall,
the man from Munich struggles with the notes he’s made –
peers close and tries to decipher – some reminder,

or equation and REMEMBER THIS
in capitals and underlined and worries what,
late one other night, so many other nights,
what this scrawl was meant to mean,

and resigned he rubs his eyes
and holds his head, and whispers to the dawn,
I could murder an unfamiliar mouse or swim
and Christ I need a drink.