The Black Cat

LIKE mice the black cat languidly allows
To play between her paws, so people live,
Nibbling at crumbs and thinking like a mouse
That crumbs are all that Life to mice will give.
There is not one of us who can obtain
More certainty of life, more surety
Than a cat’s after-dinner moods contain
Of mice in prominence or in obscurity.
So, when the creature sleeps with velvet paws,
Make haste to use the stillness in the House
To dance between the breadcrumbs and the claws
And snatch the whole life-cycle of a Mouse
From that small space fanned by the feline breath
Where lies in fitful sleep the Black Cat, Death.

Before the Cat wakes and the paw descends
How much each Mouse must do, or never know
The fleeting ecstasy before it ends;
How ceaselessly the little feet must go Backward and forward for the body’s bread;
To meet, to love, to mate, and bring to birth
Other quick feet to patter past the head
Of that great Cat who sleeps upon the earth,
Then wakes and strikes, and roams the windy ways
Of town and country, slipping past the door
Of hut and hostel, like a ghost that preys
On the king’s highways or the open moor.
Once when its prowling feet my house defiled
It took my caged bird and it spared my child.

Then, being minded healthily, I ran
Out in the sun and tilted up my chin
Till the light healed, as only sunlight can,
All the dark fears that midnight gathered in.
April was busy with her secret mirth
And flinging sentience from a golden sack;
Wherever Death had brought his prey to earth
She grew a lovelier thing behind his back.
So that I caught life to my heart again,
And laid the small bird gently in the ground,
Knowing the Cat had struck at it in vain:
Part of all color, one with all lovely sound
The bird had been, and I myself would be
Woman again though the Cat strike at me.