Part 358 of a daily series of readings of his favourite poetry by Dr Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary. Today's poem is Bestiary by James Reeves.

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~ Bestiary by James Reeves ~

Happy the quick-eyed lizard that pursues
Its creviced zigzag race
Amid the epic ruins of a temple
Leaving no trace.

Happy the weasel in the moonlit churchyard
Twisting a vibrant thread
Of narrow life between the mounds that hide
The important dead.

Close to the complex fabric of their world
The small beasts live who shun
The spaces where the huge ones bellow, fight,
And snore in the sun.

How admirable the modest and the frugal,
The small, the neat, the furtive.
How troublesome the mammoths of the world,
Gross and assertive.

Happy should we live in the interstices
Of a declining age,
Even while the impudent masters of decision
Trample and rage.