Death of the Ferret | Jean Follain | The New York Review of Books

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Inside a burrow, he
made his way to the haggard rabbit,
sucked its blood,
gorged, bloated, fell asleep;
the smoke of heather fires
lit by close-fisted peasants
failed to rouse him
from a mortal torpor.
On the road those little girls
with hearts as clearly veined
as lilac leaves
were coming back.
The bled rabbit remained odorless
but ferrets when vexed
give off a gloomy stench
which lingers on sadly after their twilit death.

Jean Follain

W.S. Merwin

W.S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and grew up in Union City, New Jersey, and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. From 1949 to 1951 he worked as a tutor in France, Portugal, and Majorca. He has since lived in many parts of the world, most recently on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. He is the author of many books of poems, prose, and translations and has received both the Pulitzer and the Bollingen Prizes for poetry, among numerous other awards. His new poetry collection is The Moon Before Morning.

This Issue

August 21, 1969