By Philip Larkin

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.

• Living
• Relationships

Poet Bio

Philip Larkin wrote poems in a stubbornly old-fashioned manner adopted from Thomas Hardy and W.B. Yeats: most feature set stanzas, regular meter and well-chosen rhymes that clinch his arguments or observations. His matter, meanwhile, is almost always dire: loneliness and the difficulty of love, the obscenity of growing old, the inevitability of death. What makes it all bearable is his absolute frankness and brilliant—if sometimes shocking— sense of humor. See More By This Poet

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