Giles Watson's poetry and prose
Open letter to the driver who struck a doe on this stretch of road, 1st October 2010, 6 p.m.
In the days when Nelson fought the battles of the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar, the “C-word” - which no naval officer dare write in full - was “coward”. The word we replace with this euphemism in our own unenlightened times was then merely a wholesome and functional anatomical reference. Then, it clearly did take some gumption to sail a vessel of wood, rope and flammable sailcloth straight at the rear of an enemy fleet. Now, it seems, we are afraid to venture out far into the countryside without hermetically sealing ourselves in glass and steel. Only thus equipped dare we sally forth in our glorified, high-speed battering rams, sycophantically unhinged in our pursuit of dominion over all that lives.
Thus prepared for battle, hunched over the steering wheel of your BMW, or Mercedes, or perhaps it was a Range Rover with a wheel-base so wide that it scraped the hedgerow on one side, and straddled the white lines on the other, you struck a three-quarters-grown roe doe on this portion of road at 6pm on Friday 1st October. No doubt you were in a hurry to get home from work, or perhaps you were hoping to drink off some of your aggression down at the pub. Almost certainly, you had been driving too fast. Perhaps you hadn’t heard that an 85 year old woman had been ploughed down not a mile a way the previous week. Or perhaps you simply didn’t care. Hitting something when you are sealed inside a car is just the same as inadvertently squashing one of the good guys in a computer game: it’s unfortunate, but you deal with it in a state of detachment.
You didn’t stop.
I rode up and found the deer minutes later. She was skittering about in the middle of the road, as though the surface were ice and her hooves unable to gain purchase. I dropped my bike and ran up to her, and she lay still across those white lines. Two cars pelted past without stopping, as I dragged her to the grassy verge. When I laid her down, I saw at once why she was unable to stand: her femur was fractured – a sheer break – and the leg hung useless, at a crazy angle. Someone kind stopped behind me, and called the R.S.P.C.A.
It is the extraordinary courage of the deer in those next few minutes which was so impressive. She lay there, quite obviously summoning all of her willpower in order to remain conscious. At times, her head slumped to the grass, and her tongue lolled, but her eyes were alive and watching me all the time. Then her body began to go through paroxysms of panting. I thought – and half-hoped for her sake – that these were her death-throes, but in fact, they were physical evidence of a summoning of courage and strength. With a lurch, she hauled herself up on three legs, and dragged herself into the thorny hedge, where she could nurse her pain away from human interference.
Clearly, it is not important to you – what the vet was compelled to do when he arrived. It is important to me, however, that you should confront what you are. It is just possible that you cannot be blamed for hitting the deer; we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. What are we to make of the fact that you did not stop to check that she was dead? Why did you make that decision? Did you not think it important? Were you more worried about whether she had necessitated a trip to the panel-beaters than you were concerned to succour her in her suffering? Were you just in too much of a god-damned rush? If two people had not stopped and called the vet, she would have lain there terrified in the middle of the road, until she was struck by some other monster clad in steel. Or perhaps she would have made it to the hedge by herself, and lain there for days, slowly dying of thirst, pain and starvation, until the circling crows came down mercifully to peck out her eyes. This was the decision that you made when you drove away: this, you thought, was best for her.
There is, of course, another possible reconstruction of your motives: you couldn’t face what you had done. Is that a more charitable assumption? Is it really? Poor diddums, driving away in your nice upholstered car, shedding a tear for the little deer you squashed on the road, not daring to look in your rear-vision mirror in case it was still alive and the sight should touch your heart. You are one of many, of course. People do this sort of thing every day. That is why our roads are littered with road-kill, one or two corpses every hundred yards, and every one of the killers too tender-hearted to get out and drag their victims to the verge. People will say it is excusable, but deep down, you know what you are.
You are a c - .
Open letter to the driver who struck a doe on this stretch of road, 1st October 2010, 6 p.m.
In the days when Nelson fought the battles of the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar, the “C-word” - which no naval officer dare write in full - was “coward”. The word we replace with this euphemism in our own unenlightened times was then merely a wholesome and functional anatomical reference. Then, it clearly did take some gumption to sail a vessel of wood, rope and flammable sailcloth straight at the rear of an enemy fleet. Now, it seems, we are afraid to venture out far into the countryside without hermetically sealing ourselves in glass and steel. Only thus equipped dare we sally forth in our glorified, high-speed battering rams, sycophantically unhinged in our pursuit of dominion over all that lives.
Thus prepared for battle, hunched over the steering wheel of your BMW, or Mercedes, or perhaps it was a Range Rover with a wheel-base so wide that it scraped the hedgerow on one side, and straddled the white lines on the other, you struck a three-quarters-grown roe doe on this portion of road at 6pm on Friday 1st October. No doubt you were in a hurry to get home from work, or perhaps you were hoping to drink off some of your aggression down at the pub. Almost certainly, you had been driving too fast. Perhaps you hadn’t heard that an 85 year old woman had been ploughed down not a mile a way the previous week. Or perhaps you simply didn’t care. Hitting something when you are sealed inside a car is just the same as inadvertently squashing one of the good guys in a computer game: it’s unfortunate, but you deal with it in a state of detachment.
You didn’t stop.
I rode up and found the deer minutes later. She was skittering about in the middle of the road, as though the surface were ice and her hooves unable to gain purchase. I dropped my bike and ran up to her, and she lay still across those white lines. Two cars pelted past without stopping, as I dragged her to the grassy verge. When I laid her down, I saw at once why she was unable to stand: her femur was fractured – a sheer break – and the leg hung useless, at a crazy angle. Someone kind stopped behind me, and called the R.S.P.C.A.
It is the extraordinary courage of the deer in those next few minutes which was so impressive. She lay there, quite obviously summoning all of her willpower in order to remain conscious. At times, her head slumped to the grass, and her tongue lolled, but her eyes were alive and watching me all the time. Then her body began to go through paroxysms of panting. I thought – and half-hoped for her sake – that these were her death-throes, but in fact, they were physical evidence of a summoning of courage and strength. With a lurch, she hauled herself up on three legs, and dragged herself into the thorny hedge, where she could nurse her pain away from human interference.
Clearly, it is not important to you – what the vet was compelled to do when he arrived. It is important to me, however, that you should confront what you are. It is just possible that you cannot be blamed for hitting the deer; we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. What are we to make of the fact that you did not stop to check that she was dead? Why did you make that decision? Did you not think it important? Were you more worried about whether she had necessitated a trip to the panel-beaters than you were concerned to succour her in her suffering? Were you just in too much of a god-damned rush? If two people had not stopped and called the vet, she would have lain there terrified in the middle of the road, until she was struck by some other monster clad in steel. Or perhaps she would have made it to the hedge by herself, and lain there for days, slowly dying of thirst, pain and starvation, until the circling crows came down mercifully to peck out her eyes. This was the decision that you made when you drove away: this, you thought, was best for her.
There is, of course, another possible reconstruction of your motives: you couldn’t face what you had done. Is that a more charitable assumption? Is it really? Poor diddums, driving away in your nice upholstered car, shedding a tear for the little deer you squashed on the road, not daring to look in your rear-vision mirror in case it was still alive and the sight should touch your heart. You are one of many, of course. People do this sort of thing every day. That is why our roads are littered with road-kill, one or two corpses every hundred yards, and every one of the killers too tender-hearted to get out and drag their victims to the verge. People will say it is excusable, but deep down, you know what you are.
You are a c - .