Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

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.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985), Humberside, 12 June 1979

This poem is taken from the 2003 edition of Philip Larkin's Collected Poems, which is faithful to his own deliberate ordering of his work, presenting, in their original sequence, his four published books: The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows. It also includes poems, such as "The Mower", which Larkin published in other places, from his juvenilia to his final years.

Diarist of the day: Vera Brittain, 29 March 1943

"Daily Herald this morning described burning Berlin on Saturday night as having looked 'like an oven'. I wonder who really gets satisfaction out of this terrible deterioration in human values."