Iain Crichton Smith: Owl and Mouse

The owl wafts home with a mouse in its beak.
The moon is stunningly bright in the high sky.

Such a gold stone, such a brilliant hard light.
Such large round eyes of the owl among the trees.

All seems immortal but for the dangling mouse,
an old hurt string among the harmony

of the masterful and jewelled orchestra
which shows no waste soundlessly playing on.


Published 1984. In animal poems there's a place for sentimentality and a place for unsentimentality; this walks the tightrope (while looking in the direction of the latter). Crichton Smith was perhaps over-prolific, as witness the banality of "The moon is stunningly bright"; but the poem then builds convincingly to its final puzzling, clotted line.