Man In A Cage Poem by David Lewis Paget

The women gathered in Hurtle Square,
Or what had remained of it,
They'd coloured their lips and they'd curled their hair
They'd powdered themselves, most everywhere,
Stepped over the rubble that lay out there,
In clothes of the tightest fit.

The cars sat silent along the street,
The paint beginning to peel,
It had been so long since the world went wrong
Since the pumps had closed and the oil had gone,
The radio played a plaintive song
Of a love that ceased to be real.

The plague had ravaged the planet's face,
Had taken a billion men,
And what was left was the barest trace
Of the masculine side of the human race,
Pollution took care of their D.N.A.'s
By gifting them Oestrogen!

There wasn't a fertile man in town,
‘Til one had returned from space,
He'd come at the end of the autumn rains
To the empty wombs and the women's pains,
So they seized him there and they bound in chains
The last hope of the race.

He sat in a cage in the Travellers Inn,
Enthroned like the chosen one,
While a hundred women paraded by
With a shimmy, a blink and a wink of the eye
From the love-lost there, an audible sigh
At the thought of bearing a son!

20 July 2012