Back to the poem. The incident is true, occurring after an early morning visit to the supermarket, followed by a quick stroll along the deserted promenade to say hello to the sea. In the first stanza the rhyming lines have feminine endings, and the unrhyming lines masculine endings; then in the second stanza the rhyming lines have masculine endings, and the unrhyming lines feminine endings; and so on, the two stanza forms alternating, to the poem's end.
In my first period of poetry-writing decades ago I wrote very little about the animal world. But already, with many others, I was becoming concerned about the horrors of industrialized farming and wrote "Mr Longley's Dream," a ballad specifically about factory farming for eggs. I posted it here on 9 May 2013.
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Monday 20 April 2020 at 8.30 am
In virus time, locked down, the streets denuded,
Hurrying home with food bags, thinly stocked,
Just off the prom a crise obtruded:
The cold-wind, blue sunned sky poured early light
Upon a gull be-snooded
In fishing gut. This lashed-up one-year gull,
Its fawn-brown plumage like a mattress’ ticking,
Was wrapped round pink-stick legs and skull
By line which trapped its wings in half-spread angles:
It stood there, waiting cull.
I paused, rested my bags, and weighed my options;
Its unresponsive eye haughtily stared:
He’d edged some yards with hobbled actions,
Traced by a trail of gut, but now was leant
Breathless on the street stanchions.
Could I unpick the line? I’d need a knife
At home, but gull and bags could not be carried
Both. Anyway, what price a life?
Pledging return, I took my bags, offloading
That gull’s tight-knotted strife.
I thought: let nature do its work; some hunter
Will sink its jaws – gulls deal death, suffer death,
All’s fair; nature knows nothing gentler.
So, home-reached, the day’s business filled my mind,
Letting no self-doubt enter.
Yet pity, special to what’s human, hissed
“Go back.” I didn’t. Fallen man’s hard-hearted
When self’s convenience is grist.
I failed a test. Why mourn if at death’s taking
I also am not missed?
===============
© March 2022
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Monday 20 April 2020 at 8.30 am
In virus time, locked down, the streets denuded,
Hurrying home with food bags, thinly stocked,
Just off the prom a crise obtruded:
The cold-wind, blue sunned sky poured early light
Upon a gull be-snooded
In fishing gut. This lashed-up one-year gull,
Its fawn-brown plumage like a mattress’ ticking,
Was wrapped round pink-stick legs and skull
By line which trapped its wings in half-spread angles:
It stood there, waiting cull.
I paused, rested my bags, and weighed my options;
Its unresponsive eye haughtily stared:
He’d edged some yards with hobbled actions,
Traced by a trail of gut, but now was leant
Breathless on the street stanchions.
Could I unpick the line? I’d need a knife
At home, but gull and bags could not be carried
Both. Anyway, what price a life?
Pledging return, I took my bags, offloading
That gull’s tight-knotted strife.
I thought: let nature do its work; some hunter
Will sink its jaws – gulls deal death, suffer death,
All’s fair; nature knows nothing gentler.
So, home-reached, the day’s business filled my mind,
Letting no self-doubt enter.
Yet pity, special to what’s human, hissed
“Go back.” I didn’t. Fallen man’s hard-hearted
When self’s convenience is grist.
I failed a test. Why mourn if at death’s taking
I also am not missed?
===============
© March 2022
