Mouse

I arrived home from work the other week to find a dead field mouse on my living room floor. It was a perfectly, beautiful sandy coloured mouse with dark grey eyes. I immediately felt a sense of overwhelming sadness and reverence, that it had died at the cruel, but natural nature of my pet cats. My cats were very proud of their success and positively strutted around the appartment for a week afterwards! (they are indoor cats and only had the opportunity to kill flies and the occasional spider previously.) Anyway, I felt disgusted that they had obviously tortured the poor creature to death and have included 'Thomas' poem below, which captures the essence of how a little girl felt upon the death of a bird.

Snow

In the gloom of whiteness,
And the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying: 'Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast!'
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

Edward Thomas


A Mouse

Nature is such, whether cruel or
just.
You have no need for me, but my
soul -

A plaything I am to you:
But your greed would have me,
a while longer.

The lion in me is the mouse, and
the mouse - the lion;
Fearful and brave, in differing
amounts.

Reverence! you have not, for
these things.
Your very nature is satiated, by
my suffering - justly so.

Longing, longing - to drift
I am not doing you well.
Sorry - but not much longer now;
There; my last breath...

LB