The city fox envies his soft, rural kin: <br />They don’t have to watch out for lorries and cars. <br />The sleek village vixen just lazes away <br />In wide-open fields, underneath sparkling stars. <br /> <br />The city fox has to go out in the light <br />When rustical Reynard sleeps safe in his bed. <br />He only pops out in the midst of the night <br />To pilfer some poultry from his chickenshed. <br /> <br />The city fox struggles to keep himself fed; <br />A diet of leftovers doesn’t go far. <br />Whilst eking a living is all he can do, <br />Arcadian diets are like caviare. <br /> <br />The city fox scratches in bins for his food <br />But, out in the country, his cousin lives well <br />On rabbit and pheasant and other fine game <br />Whilst rough, tatty townie recoils from the smell. <br /> <br />The city fox wears his dull coat sparse and thin; <br />His privileged relative sports rich and red. <br />He sleeps in a cosy, warm, luxury earth <br />And not in a dingy, cramped, waterlogged bed. <br /> <br />The city fox hangs his tail limply and sad; <br />He carries an unbristled stub of a brush, <br />Whilst proudly his brother wags, bouffant and brash, <br />His tail, fully furnished with fur long and lush. <br /> <br />The city fox seeks for our sympathy, but <br />He thinks he is safer by living in town <br />For out in the country, they shoot and they hunt <br />And life can be dangerous, if you are brown. <br /> <br />The city fox chooses to live where he does <br />Away from the huntsmen so pretty in pink <br />As, shouting and chasing, they gallop along <br />With hounds in the vanguard who jostle and jink. <br /> <br />The city fox laughs at his lazy, fat aunts <br />Who, chased by the beagles, soon run out of breath <br />And give up the ghost and surrender at last <br />In terror, awaiting a violent death, <br /> <br />But city MPs have abolished his fun <br />By banishing hunting to history’s book <br />And so his soft sisters are safe as can be <br />While his life is hard; they have all the luck.<br /><br />C Richard Miles<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/city-fox-country-fox/
