My favourite poems VI: Seamus Heaney

Another poem. I've read many attempts to analyse this, mostly concluding that it's about the need not to be sentimental when living in the country. I think that rather ignores the blindingly obvious hint of the title. You don't purge animals, you purge people. You start with small cruelties and you end up herding children into gas chambers.

The Early Purges 

I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits',
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,

  Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
  Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout
  Of the pump and the water pumped in.

'Sure, isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.

  Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
  Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains
  Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung

Until I forgot them. But the fear came back
When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows
Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks.

  Still, living displaces false sentiments
  And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown
  I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It makes sense:

'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town
Where they consider death unnatural
But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.

Seamus Heaney