Monday, March 11, 2024

The Mower (Monday Poem)

 by Philip Larkin
 

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence   
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   
While there is still time.


 
from Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin 
Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001

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