Jon Silkin: Caring for Animals

I ask sometimes why these small animals
With bitter eyes, why we should care for them.

I question the sky, the serene blue water,
But it cannot say. It gives no answer.

And no answer releases in my head
A procession of grey shades patched and whimpering.

Dogs with clipped ears, wheezing cart horses
A fly without shadow and without thought.

Is it with these menaces to our vision
With this procession led by a man carrying wood

We must be concerned? The holy land, the rearing
Green island should be kindlier than this.

Yet the animals, our ghosts, need tending to.
Take in the whipped cat and the blinded owl;

Take up the man-trapped squirrel upon your shoulder.
Attend to the unnecessary beasts,

From growing mercy and a moderate love
Great love for the human animal occurs.

And your love grows. Your great love grows and grows.


Published in Silkin's second collection, The Peaceable Kingdom (1954).  There's such a dogged unwillingness here to write well-crafted poetry that I find myself hoping the poet wins through to a statement underpinned at a deeper level than mere image, rhythm or even logic. But I don't think he succeeds. The poem ends up as a testament to the dangers of over-directness ("From growing mercy and a moderate love / Great love for the human animal occurs"): it's too clumsily full-frontal to communicate poetry. Silkin might have dismissed that view as rarefied and evasive.