How could we ever break free of our longing for you, when you had been to us a trusty resource among resources?
You would drive the mice from their hideouts—​from the open crevices to the sealed-up holes.
Reinforcements of them would face you in the house, yet you confronted them single-handed and unsupported.
Until you came to entertain harm for our neighbors—​though harm had never been your creed (1).
By wronging them you circled the pool of doom, and whoever circles a pool will surely drink from it.
My heart trembled for you while you slipped along unafraid.
You would enter the dovecote with measured tread, yet swallow the squab without a pause.
You scattered the feathers in their path while you devoured the meat with the gulp of a ravenous glutton (2).
Waywardness fed you on that flesh, so its owners deemed your killing the prudent course.
They schemed against you for ages, yet you were not caught; how often you eluded their plots while never plotting yourself.
But when you broke faith, overindulged, exposed yourself, and overstepped all bounds,
They trapped you in anger, took revenge, and went even further—​for whoever hunts is hunted.
Then they cooled their rage against you with iron, showing mercy to no one.
You never ceased lying in wait for the pigeons until Death itself, in ambush, was dealt to you.
They did not pity your frail voice, just as you had never mourned their melodious cooing (3).
Their master made you taste death just as, hand for hand, you had made his nestlings taste it.
It was as though a finely twisted palm-fiber rope had tightened round your neck for the strangling.
And it is as if my eyes still see you thrashing there, froth of spume bubbling in your mouth.