[Jerome Betts]

TAXIDERMY

The trouble is with taxidermy
That creatures stuffed with loving care
Become, in future ages, wormy,
And fall to pieces in the air.


The most obese and lifelike beaver
Stuffed by Tim Pettigrew of Penge,
Will vanish like a passing fever
Compared with Byblos or Stonehenge.

The taxidermist's art is vagrant,
A fleeting thing that fades too soon,
Condemned to wither, like the fragrant
Roses beneath the summer moon.

Those moles and ferrets, elks and vipers,
Though stuffed apparently to stay
Are like the airs of distant pipers
That mercifully fade away.

Where are they now, the cunning foxes,
The lovebirds in their glassy case?
Turned rotten at the core, like Coxes
Kept in an injudicious place.

The leopards, tastefully engladed,
The coy koalas, short and stout -
Their fur is by the moth invaded,
Their beady little eyes drop out.

How fleet of Finnish foot was Nurmi!
How lissom Lenglen on the court!
And so it is with taxidermy;
Not only life, but art is short.


Punch April 1965