A Lament for the Dead Pets of Our Childhood

Even now I dream of rabbits murdered

By loose dogs in the dark, the saved-up voice

Spilt on that last terror, or the springtime

Of lost baby rabbits, grey and blind

As moles, that slipped from birth and from the nest

Into a grey, blind rain, became the mud.

And still I gather up their shapes in dreams,

Those poor, leftover Easter eggs, all grey.

That’s how we found out death: the strangled bird

Undone by a toy hung in his cage,

The foundlings that would never last the night,

Be it pigeon, crippled snake, the kitten

Whose very fleas forsook it in the morning

While we nursed a hangover of hope.

After the death of pets, dolls lay too still

And wooden in the cradle, sister, after

We learned death: not hell, no ghosts or angels,

But a cold thing in the image of a warm thing,

Limp as sleep without the twitch of dreams.