Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

In his great poem, The Mower, Philip Larkin wrote: "Of each other, we should be kind/While there is still time," and the Virginia Tech killings by the murderous misfit loner Cho Seung-hui have brought home to us the urgency of his command.

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)