LITTLE MAN – WHAT NOW?

(To the atom bomb)

Bravo, my little man, but why so scared?

You’ve made the grade, with yesterday compared

Have far outmatched the power on the red morn

You gained with poisoned dart and venomed thorn.

Though merely one man at a time to slay

Seemed, even then, such long-drawn-out delay.

How trivial are those bows and arrows now

That you have learned by leaping stages how

Grim Death’s vast lethal scythe to sharpen fresh,

And scatter into dust mere mortal flesh.

So on the discard throw your crude machines,

Your battleships, your tanks, your submarines.

One day, with Earth a sepulchre of stone

You’ll reign a prince, the conqueror – alone!

London, 1947

Stella liked this poem.  I had to confess that I had had some input from a friend Mike Koslover who had critiqued it when I produced it for the Wall Newspaper of the North Hackney branch of the Young Communist League   She liked it anyway!