swan_tower: (Default)
swan_tower ([personal profile] swan_tower) wrote in [personal profile] larryhammer 2019-04-08 06:53 pm (UTC)

One nice thing about the English language is that you can swap out standard pronouns without altering scansion in the slightest -- and Frost even had the courtesy to choose a name that's easily altered to a modern feminine form!

"The End of My Ant Jeri"

An ant on the table cloth
Ran into a dormant moth
Of many times her size.
She showed not the least surprise.
Her business wasn’t with such.
She gave it scarcely a touch,
And was off on her duty run.
Yet if she encountered one
Of the hive’s enquiry squad
Whose work is to find out God
And the nature of time and space,
She would put her onto the case.
Ants are a curious race;
One crossing with hurried tread
The body of one of their dead
Isn’t given a moment’s arrest—
Seems not even impressed.
But she no doubt reports to any
With whom she crosses antennae,
And they no doubt report
To the higher up at court.
Then word goes forth in Formic:
“Death’s come to Jeri McCormic,
Our selfless forager Jeri.
Will the special Janizary
Whose office it is to bury
The dead of the commissary
Go bring her home to her people.
Lay her in state on a sepal.
Wrap her for shroud in a petal.
Embalm her with ichor of nettle.
This is the word of your Queen.”
And presently on the scene
Appears a solemn mortician;
And taking formal position
With feelers calmly atwiddle,
Seizes the dead by the middle,
And heaving her high in air,
Carries her out of there.
No one stands round to stare.
It is nobody else’s affair.

It couldn’t be called ungentle.
But how thoroughly departmental.


I edited for my own entertainment, to see how it would read with feminine pronouns, and then thought others might like to see.

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