To a Farmer

This is a response to Robert Burns “To A Mouse” which was written in 1785 and is about a farmer who accidentally ploughed over a mouse’s nest. Below is my version of a reply by the mouse; titled “To A Farmer” by me.

 

“To A Farmer”

Big, slow, invasive, clumsy beast,
O, stretching with arms that know no end to its reach,
Shoveling all living things in overfilled bellies with a never-ending ritual of feast!
Let my response be anything but brief nor mistook for idol tongue and cheek!

With a kiss upon death? It is your sorrow? I reject!
I loath to run at you and your murdering plough-staff,
Because fate deemed me to late from your; mistake?
Hence if thy examined the field before the death thy wield,
Then and only then my remorse ridden friend I could hug my babies again,
But now in damping eyes it’s a hard goodbye,
As I’m only left with your afterthought reply!

Revenge I submit will be mine, O in due time,
In the night, you awake to; scattering upon the floor, a creaking door, and on wood creatures bite all the while out of sight,
In the walls? Under your very bed? Fright
sneaking in like a thief robbing all other thought in your busy head-leaving only dread and grief!
Until you spill like blood upon the floor,
Paralyzed, Red beady eyes gaze upon demise,
Creeping like fear from a small hole in the bottom of the wall, of your house
Now lie on my level, face to face with a verminous devil, your friend the mouse.

By the unknown sith

Reviews

[Swagato Saha]

To my mind, this is like the darker version of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Mountain and the Squirrel" - (if we are able to similarly see Squirrel's response as an independent poem.) Lovely bit of work, and I think this is truly contemporary insofar as it insists on this darker aspect of Nature and natural rhythms - thank you for sharing!

[Quill]

i like the way this is written, i am pretty sure Robert Burns would like it very much