February Poetry

February

BY MARGARET ATWOOD

Winter. Time to eat fat 

and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,   

a black fur sausage with yellow 

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries   

to get onto my head. It’s his 

way of telling whether or not I’m dead. 

If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am   

He’ll think of something. He settles 

on my chest, breathing his breath 

of burped-up meat and musty sofas, 

purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,   

not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,   

declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,

which are what will finish us off 

in the long run. Some cat owners around here   

should snip a few testicles. If we wise   

hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,   

or eat our young, like sharks. 

But it’s love that does us in. Over and over   

again, He shoots, he scores! and famine 

crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing   

eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits   

thirty below, and pollution pours 

out of our chimneys to keep us warm. 

February, month of despair, 

with a skewered heart in the centre. 

I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries   

with a splash of vinegar. 

Cat, enough of your greedy whining 

and your small pink bumhole. 

Off my face! You’re the life principle, 

more or less, so get going 

on a little optimism around here. 

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.