at the foot of a tree
a small squirrel
splayed sideways,
foetal

eyes closed
toes long, languid
tail curled a wrong way
fur the colour of
small moths,
dun

head caved in
ants roving over it
like raindrops over the windows
of a moving vehicle,
hesitant;

no taxidermist ever
came as close as this

almost beautiful
almost

"I just wrote it was about the physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living. And the kind of way it went bubbada-bubbada-bubbada... You know, kind of poetically, and the clumsy bs and ps in it, and how it tried to explain something that wasn't there, or was there. I just really liked it. It really stuck in my mind."
· Damien Hirst, from On The Way To Work