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(In the deliriously free Verse of the Contemporary Malarial School)
I sing not of a Wellington or Beaufort,
Stirling or Halifax or a Lancaster,
But of a Mosquito.
It zithers and zooms, it drones and drawls.
It hums and buzzes and hollers and huzzas.
(The Mosquitoes are out tonight,
Over Berlin, Ploesti, the Ruhr, I know where)
But there is one over me,
It lours terrifically to dive-bomb,
Heedless of my ack-ack and balloon barrage,
And unloads cargo of blight and blister and bale.
Other Mosquitoes less fierce squat on and pierce the victim.
But this deadly, destructive, winged demon.
(The learned call it the Anopheles,
Which is mercifully Greek for meaning,
“No good at all on earth but Satanic and evil”,)
It is will and act together; and stabs a whole stick of bombs
While on the wing; then flies away to live to stab.
Another fellow, another day.
The ancients said; “The female of the species.
Is fiercer than the male—
Sharper mandible, keener proboscis,
Rougher antennae and surer palpi.”
Who is she who led the Commando Raid over me?
Lady Macbeth (female again) said: “Yet who would have thought
The old man to have so much blood in him?
My little Feste said: “With such a capitalistic,
Perambulating, bursting Blood Bank like you.
Who is the Mosquito that could resist?”
Not Sir Dennisoh Ross nor Sir Ronald Storrs.
Not Sir Rennel Rodd but Sir Ronald Ross,
Said modestly upon first looking into the Champman’s Homer
Of an Anopheles, stout Cortez-like with microscope
Upon a bally peak in Darien :
“I know this little thing
A myriad men will save.”
The Doctor and Academic Medical Councillor said;
“Now-a- days, you see.
Tabloid quinine is scarcer than the gold of France.
So take it liquidallv, not Heffalumpishly;
Then follow a course of fifteen yellow pellets
Lest the virus recur or occur again;
Then, another fifteen ruddy pillules,
Lest you transmit the g«/m to the Sovereign Proletariat.
Social Justice demands this cruel necessity.”
I said: “So let it be, a so you please.
As I have preached so often, willy-nilly,
So now let me practise the same.”
The Morning Paper said through Reuter’s man:
“All last night’s Mosquitoes
Returned safely to their base;
Maximum damage on enemy objectives,
But without loss —
A most successful show.
Social Justice — 1943
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