This one's a bit old -- actually, it was written 35 years ago <sigh>.
Robin
Cats
There was a goddess of cats, once,
And cats in the Tibetan temples
Stalking at night round the treasures;
And great cats in the damp jungles
Lapping crouched low on the river bank.
I have watched cats on the road
Walking delicately, then still delicately faster,
Lengthening up a wall, turning,
Finally seated in the lotus posture.
But cats?
Isis was the Goddess, and surely
There was one Osiris?
It was a cruel thing she did
And a cruel knife she stabbed him with;
But cats are cruel, and she was a Cat Goddess.
Cats hunt birds, sheathed killing-knives unsheathed.
The Wren is free now, on the eve of the year,
No longer arrow pierced and swung
On a stick, the Goddess's trophy.
Achilles long ago, an arrow through his heel
Between the tendon and the bone --
Also the place where the Wren was struck.
But that was cruelty, and long ago:
Now we neuter the beasts, spay and castrate.
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