The Swedish poet Lennart Sjögren

A fox with mange

You who believe in a happy world

take time to linger for a while

with the fox – one afflicted by mange.

You will see how it squirms like a snake

biting its own flesh

you will see one large wound where before

there was a body.

And the mange mite’s eggs open

and rejoice for a while in their new awakening

as do all living things

they have their fine lair in the raging wound.

The question is

how are we ever to follow the fox’s journey

to its slow and ripped-up death

without

our faces turning to wood.

Long before the Spanish boot of medieval times

animals died like this

and they will die like this

and people will die like this

and their death will be saturated in torment.

Best fare the smiling and those blind of soul

worst the fox in its protracted death

and worst of all

the mange that dies for lack of fox.

 For information about the 'Spanish boot', go to here.

For a translation of a wonderful long poem by Sjögren, 'The Bird-hunters' go to here.