A Poem

Betty remembered this wonderful poem today while thinking about Bimbo. :

The Mower

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 once 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.

--Philip Larkin, 1979

[Note: Betty and Bimbo, at the British Library almost two years back, bore witness to Philip Larkin's deadly lawnmower on display.]