Kitten Song

for Dee Dee

All murmur in the hearth, when by degrees
the falls and flights in all the news grow faint,
nosing into listless distance, displease
her lining of feline environs, paint

a cosy fuss for which, as a sunk Sphinx,
ingenuous and numinously neat,
she loafs away her charism, and blinks
in her calm, cottoned, Carmelite retreat,

and gadding on with soft, subtle apace,
a wilting optic orchestra plays out,
when homeliness deepens about the place,
as Larkin’s pets would, had he some about

to shelve sorrow in place of restfulness,
recline as Abraham and Jacob’s sheep,
augmenting their dreams. She knows, more or less,
whatsoever she soweth, she can sleep.