P.J. Kavanagh was an English poet, novelist, essayist, broadcaster and actor whose books include The Perfect Stranger and On the Way to the Depot.
P.J. Kavanagh
Goldie Sapiens
From On the Way to the Depot, 1967. Reprinted in The Oxford Book of Comic Verse. Ed. John Gross. OUP, 1994.
When Goldie the golden eagle escaped from the Zoo
All the world went to Regent's Park and we went too.
There he was, with an air of depression, a sooty hunch,
Digesting the grey-eyed merganser he had for lunch.
Under him, children and coppers and mothers and fathers
And bare-kneed ornithologists with cameras
Hanging down to their ankles and lovers and others
Peeling damp cellophane from sandwiches stand and wait...
Later that evening the Nation breathed a sigh.
Goldie like us, Goldie the human and sage,
With tail between talons, had lolloped back to the cage.
Goldie escaped from the London Zoo in February 1965 and was at large for two weeks. He remained for most of the time in Regent's Park.