Revolutionaries with vacant faces,
local lads waving shiny bayonets,
they rummage through the drawer
where mother’s letters are stored,
searching for any remaining copies
of the book which you, by virtue of
the underground, are reading now, –
a harmless text, no secret messages
amid the ornithoptera rendered
in watercolours, a work unengaged
(I will admit) with respect to the crisis
which has been gripping us from birth.
Also as the comrade pointed out I failed
to specify how class struggle impacts
the insect world, an error easily rectified
in future editions, the cadre, satisfied
as to my innocence, giving its green light.
Identify me as an expert in butterfly poisons,
tell them I alone can decipher the bug code,
and by the way the implementation crew
could use a shakeup in my humble view.
Thrown into the typists’ pool, ink-stained,
I wave the black anarchist flag, next I am
getting reeducated in an alpine slave camp.