The women gathered in Hurtle Square, <br />Or what had remained of it, <br />They'd coloured their lips and they'd curled their hair <br />They'd powdered themselves, most everywhere, <br />Stepped over the rubble that lay out there, <br />In clothes of the tightest fit. <br /> <br />The cars sat silent along the street, <br />The paint beginning to peel, <br />It had been so long since the world went wrong <br />Since the pumps had closed and the oil had gone, <br />The radio played a plaintive song <br />Of a love that ceased to be real. <br /> <br />The plague had ravaged the planet's face, <br />Had taken a billion men, <br />And what was left was the barest trace <br />Of the masculine side of the human race, <br />Pollution took care of their D.N.A.'s <br />By gifting them Oestrogen! <br /> <br />There wasn't a fertile man in town, <br />‘Til one had returned from space, <br />He'd come at the end of the autumn rains <br />To the empty wombs and the women's pains, <br />So they seized him there and they bound in chains <br />The last hope of the race. <br /> <br />He sat in a cage in the Travellers Inn, <br />Enthroned like the chosen one, <br />While a hundred women paraded by <br />With a shimmy, a blink and a wink of the eye <br />From the love-lost there, an audible sigh <br />At the thought of bearing a son! <br /> <br />20 July 2012<br /><br />David Lewis Paget<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/man-in-a-cage/
