Monday 9 April 2012

THE FOX KNOWS MANY THINGS. THE HEDGEHOG KNOWS ONE BIG THING.

COMMENT:

All the things the fox knows are outward-facing: hunting, sniffing, mapping, deceiving, avoiding, running. The biggest thing he knows is to run to his "earth" when he can no longer avoid his hunters.

He made his spurt for the Mourne End rocks.
The air blew rank with the taint of fox;
The yews gave way to a greener space
Of great stones strewn in a grassy place.
And there was his earth at the great grey shoulder,
Sunk in the ground, of a granite boulder.
A dry, deep burrow with a rocky roof,
Proof against crowbars, terrier-proof,
Life to the dying, rest for bones.

But, when he gets there,

The earth was stopped; it was filled with stones.
Then, for a moment, his courage failed,
His eyes looked up as his body quailed,
Then the coming of death, which all things dread,
Made him run for the wood ahead.

The fox's biggest thing is not big enough! The hedgehog's is bigger.

The hedgehog escapes away from the world. He rolls up into himself. Even the fox cannot follow him past his spikes.  But the leather-covered hands of man can reach him. Lift him. Drop him in boiling water and eat him.

The hedgehog's biggest thing is not big enough.


NEW PROJECT: KNOW THYSELF.


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