Philip Larkin & The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

The poem begins with inaction. The mower stalls and the poet discovers the machine has killed a hedgehog that he had seen before in his garden and even fed. Its lines bring a sense of brutal shock to the reader, as death so often does: “Next morning I got up and it did not.” There’s also the use of the unusual word “unmendably” starting a new line, which provides a tiny pause before we get it, making the word stand out strongly. There’s a simple directness about the lines that brings the little creature’s death home to us painfully. The word ‘mower’ works in three ways – it is the machine itself, the man pushing the machine, and the Grim reaper who mows down human life with his scythe. In the last stanza, the lines are cut short – just as life can be so easily cut short.

The poem ends with a reminder that we will not be around for ever and should remember to be kinder to each other. That reminder seems more necessary than ever in this crazy and war-torn world in which we live.

The poem was written in 1979 and was first published in Humberside, the magazine of the Hull Literary Club. It was inspired by a real-life event. Larkin often chose death as a theme in his poetry, and he liked realistic and even humdrum settings. A poet mowing his lawn and accidentally killing a wild creature is not the usual subject of poetry (though of course Robert Burns managed it brilliantly in To a Mouse). Larkin was known to be kind to animals and was a big fan of Beatrix Potter, who created Mrs Tiggywinkle, a famous fictional hedgehog. The hedgehog never did him any harm, and through carelessness, he has ended its life. Even burying the animal fails to overcome his shame at what he has done.

You can listen to it very movingly read by actor Tom Hiddleston: