Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

We called him Selby, not
after that Yorkshire mining town, although
God knows, he was a grimy beggar, but
because, poor chap, he was so plainly past
his sell-by date. Our little joke, you know:
our guess that his next meal could be his last.

He took his food in pain
being almost toothless, could not chew his meat,
but bolted it in gobs; he was unclean,
dirt-scarred, from fights, or sleeping rough, perhaps;
decency had abandoned him; a sheet
of thickened spittle hung around his chaps.

In sunny Tenerife
wild cats like Selby are a common sight,
where children in sweet innocence receive ~
the Christmas gifts that summer throws away;
the furry toy they cuddled on Twelfth Night
put out to pine in hell come Easter Day,

to forage, fight or fall,
to fornicate with strangers, to beget
unsightly brats, to live life to the full -
much like a human, on uncertain terms -
until he’s caught and neutered by the vet
or done to death by violence or his worms.

Well, as for Selby, we
felt that his sufferings had gone too far.
It would be kind, we said, to set him free,
to have him put to sleep; it would be kind
to catch him by the river, as it were,
and ferry him to lasting peace of mind.

But what a fight he made!
You might have thought that he would understand,
somehow, the benefits of being dead.
Is the sunlight so dear? You might have thought
a lick of cream, a browse at garden’s end,
hardly worth fighting for. But still he fought.

Then went to be put down,
abstracted to the past, a scheme devised
more for our civil comfort than his own.
So with all things beyond their sell-by date;
so with all lives outcast, outworn, despised,
by the Lord given, stifled by the State.