Not knowing the facts of life
I learned the facts of death.
My mother told me to bury the cats.
They were four of five
in number, kittens,
the size of dead hampsters.
I buried them as at Trafalgar
in a cardboard box
in a ditch
Where I dug out a hole
in the soft, muddy earth
too soon to be
bared by reality.
Many have been buried this way.
At Trafalgar the Spanish did
not bury the dead at sea.
As they washed ashore at Cadiz
they buried them in the sand
wherever their bodies landed
As when a teenage cat
ran round our house
then, when I was ten.
My mother explained to me
that all her babies were dead.
She was far too young
to have babies
and too young to bury well
I buried them
as at Trafalgar
to be washed away by next tide
of rainfall in a ditch.