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Anything but Man!!!

by Priyaa Trippayar Sahasranaman
(Bangalore)

“They know that it’s an eerie squall,
That man unleashed to beckon his fall!”

In their larder while piling grain,
Speak two ants in arcane:

Worker Ant: A brigade of ours lifting feed,
Storing so much food, isn’t that greed?

Ant Chief: Yes, it is greed, as you tell,
But less than man’s- its need for a spell;
Man pilfers and squanders; he fears no hell,
As his thirst for riches is beyond quell.

Worker Ant: Before was better, man was a little more kind,
The wild he helped, he weren’t this blind.

Ant Chief: Rightly said, yet behold our mate,
He looks uneasy or hit by ill fate;
Or the Anteater he eluded, mighty and great.

The look of the mate is marred by grief,
He enters the larder with belief,
That he can earn great relief,
When he paints the episode for his chief:

Ant Chief: Oh my god! You do seem hurt,
Did anteater bonk you? Thou weren’t alert?

Injured Ant: Anteaters are better, they kill to eat;
Never to revel, or show off their beat;
Hiding was I, in a petal’s pleat,
To shield myself from the summer heat,

Then came a girl, out to play,
She pulled me out, to my dismay,
And then she crushed me, in mirth and gay,
She cherished my ache, I must say.

Luck rose up; I just slipped through,
Yet lost my back and legs a few!

Worker Ant: How unkind! Yet man is worse,
Not just to lower ones, he’s averse;
His kind too, he would kill and curse
For revenge or to fill his purse.

Injured Ant: Yet, right and wrong, does all he know,
Unlike us who lives below.

Ant Chief: God gave him, but not us,
Those extra senses, we don’t possess,
Yet in any birth, or for any span,
We are glad to be anything, but Man!