Battue - a poem by C.O. Jellema

BATTUE

Long spoonlike ears against his back full-flattened,

huddled deep in the furrow lay the hare,

and I, as I drew nearer, pretended,

forsaking my task as a beater, not

to have caught sight of him, not his eyes bulging

with fear, void as if not perceiving me,

not behind me unbounded freedom, but

an inner nothing, a hole at his feet,

too deep, too wide to dare to think of leaping.

Then, as I made the step that took me past him

in a split second he was gone – and turning

(to cursings from the ditchside, though no shot)

I saw him make his dash for the horizon,

a mere dot now on white hard-frozen clay.

How did he meet his end I wonder. Braised

in wine, run over by a car perhaps

or simply from old age among cold furrows –

when in spring in the field outside the house

the hares romp and tumble, I think of him:

how fear can sometimes be a sudden force

that sets you free down to your pounding heart.

It could be, if the hole that grows in me

becomes too deep, too wide for any leaping,

a hare will plead my case with god (for

an animal that knows fear has a soul, too,

that is saved), if only since I remember

that morning, that one step and that instinct

with which life saves itself by its own force.