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The Society of Malaŵi Journal

Archive Images No: 14

Thoughts on a Sleeping Cat at the King’s Cliffe Youth Hostel, 21-22 September 1940.

by

George – not yet known as Sam – Shepperson

Oh, I wish that’s all I had to do:
Just lie in the sun like a cat all day.

Purr at eight for milk and food;
Then to some quiet corner to snooze, snooze ... snooze.
And the sun pours in: in fine, floating beam
The dancing dust streams down, like silver beads in a wash of gold,
And one great gleam
Lights up each tawny seam
On the sleeper’s faintly swaying breast
As she lies – in perfect rest!
And, if no sun, to lie beside the fireside in the baked ecstasy of sleep,
As deep,
deep,
deep
The rain patters on the windowpane
again,
again,
again.

And wars are fought and men are killed,
And hearts are broken and blood is spilled;
Unyielding fields are tilled and tilled;
And farmers curse and curse and curse,
And things get worse and worse and worse.
But a cat just lies in the sun all day,
And dreams and dreams its time away.

And ladies lose their hearts to men,
And they, in turn, lose theirs to them.
Then money rears its awful head
And sternly says, “Thou shalt not wed.”
But passion has no care for cash
And finishes by doing rash
And foolish things in a careless cuddle;
And things get into a frightful muddle.
But a cat just lies in the sun all day
And dreams and dreams its time away.

And foolish men spoil good men’s work,
And good men shrug, and work again;
The foolish laugh and feel no pain –
“Why worry”, they say, “they don’t complain”.
But cats don’t bump into this brick wall:
The sly old things don’t work at all.
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