The Mower by Philip Larkin

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 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.



Poem: "The Mower" by Philip Larkin, from Collected Poems. Farrar, Straus, Giroux



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