Adrian Mitchell
The Fox
A prolific poet whose verse tackled social injustice, nuclear disarmament, racism and violence, and was often declaimed at political demonstrations, Adrian Mitchell‘s ‘The Fox’ was published in the June 1954 issue of The London Magazine, edited by John Lehmann.
A fox among the shadows of the town
Should I surrender to the arms of man?
…….On the blank icehills lies in wait
…….The fighting cold who has thrown down
…….His challenge. I’ll not imitate
…….The feline compromise. I scan
…….With warring eyes the servile fate
Of animals who joined the heated town.
Lean-hearted lions in the concrete zoo
Grow bellies, tendons slacken in pale hide,
…….Their breath slows to a dying pace.
…….Their keepers love them? Tell me who
…….Would cage his love in such a place,
…….Where only fish are satisfied?
…….The keeper has a huntsman’s face,
His grasping love would kill me in the zoo.
A scavenger throughout the snowing wind
I peel the sweet bark from the frozen tree
…….Or trap the bird with springing jaws.
…….The sun retreats out of my mind.
…….How could I give this waking pause
…….When death’s my sleeping company?
…….Mad empty, licking at my sores,
I howl this bitter and unloving wind.
Furious in the savage winter day
The crimson riders hounded me from birth
…….Through landscapes built of thorn and stone.
…….Though I must be their sudden prey,
…….Torn to my terror’s skeleton,
…….Or go to the forgotten earth;
…….I will have hunted too, alone,
I will have wandered in my handsome day.
Four seasons wrestle me, I throw them all
And live to tumble with another year
…….In love or battle. I’ll not fly
…….From mindless elements and fall
…….A victim to the keeper’s lie.
…….The field is mine; but still I fear
…….Strong death, my watching enemy,
Though seasons pass and I survive them all.
By Adrian Mitchell
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