O Life, Life, let me breathe,—a dug-out rat!

Not worse than ours the lives rats lead—

Nosing along at night down some safe rut,

They find a shell-proof home before they rot.

Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,

Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys,

And subdivide, and never come to death.

Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth.

“I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone,”

Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned:

The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.

“Pushing up daisies,” is their creed, you know.

 

Excerpt from ‘A Terre’

-Wilfred Owen