from the 9th century Irish

Myself and Pangur, my white cat,
have much the same calling, in that
much as Pangur goes after mice
I go hunting for the precise

word. He and I are much the same
in that I’m gladly ‘lost to fame’
when on the Georgics, say, I’m bent
while he seems perfectly content

with his lot. Life in the cloister
can’t possibly lose its lustre
so long as there’s some crucial point
with which we might by leaps and bounds

yet grapple, into which yet sink
our teeth. The bold Pangur will think
through mouse-snagging much as I muse
on something naggingly abstruse,

then fix his clear, unflinching eye
on our lime-white cell-wall, while I
focus, in so far as I can,
on the limits of what a man

may know. Something of his rapture
at his most recent mouse-capture
I share when I, too, get to grips
with what has given me the slip.

And so we while away our whiles,
never cramping each other’s styles
but practicing the noble arts
that so lift and lighten our hearts,

Pangur going in for the kill
with all his customary skill
while I, sharp-witted, swift and sure,
shed light on what had seemed obscure.