Philip Crick
Ants
On the paved edge:
neat holes in rows
and a fine sprinkle
of jettisoned sand,
planned as any golf-course.
These folk are miners,
archaeologists maybe,
plotting out their zone
with a blind grammar.
They nibble in the cracks
of the human scheme,
nurturing an underground
building up HQ,
a base for their forays
across my lino.
If I catch them there
hammer them to pulp
with no hint of pity.
I loathe their addiction
to travel and to work.
(They must have powerful
unions).
When I hoover with my kettle
full of scathing water
to do my own hiroshima
upon these dizzy specks,
I feel a scant remorse
as the hot flood shrivels,
and the scared survivors
clamber up a flower,
quake-victims caught
in a local tree.
It’s too bloody easy,
I’m supposed to love life,
but I smash them silly
just because they threaten.
And I grow ashamed
of my own inflated shadow.
All that Himmler did
was to change the terms of reference.
Page(s) 31-32
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