"Well, imagine that"

 

a lone fat snail, still in his grandad's boots, & with a twitch in both his horns
  had been going a mile a minute, pawing away
   at his neighbour's post,

 

greasing his ears with lies, two trusty ears that'd heard the lies before—    
  this snail who'd never leave without a trace,
   a sole proprietary trace

 

Ah! snail's life can be a bad one, at one moment flattening a verandah board,
  a shadow squeezed out from under his hot gut,
   & the next harassed

 

by the pernickety cat after all, after all whose shadow's greater than his gut
  But he thinks it would be great
    —the snail thinks!—

 

to lie flat on a cherry plank or slink along the grain towards a friendly ear of
  his mistress watering the azaleas
    & neighbour who digs alone

 

in his straw hat, behind the fence, content to hear more of his easy streets
  til the rooks, flustered and tail bristling,
    mistake him for a worm,

 

the hump-backed worm, and peck like mad at one then both of his silvery horns,
  snail rapt lifeless to the top of a tree,
   bitten in half

 

(a horn in one claw & another dripping from a beak,still twitching as he rose)
  hardly to be seen in a shadowless sky,
    greasy yelps unheard