HOMO PARTURIENS

                   1.   She created man in Her own image; She created 

                        him in the image of Woman; She created them

                        drone and female.

                   2.   She gave birth in pain, moaning, shrieking,

                        pushing out of Herself the generations to come.

                   3.   And as She sweated drops of blood, tearing Her

                        flesh with Her nails, making of Herself a

                        passage between yesterday and tomorrow,

                   4.   There emerged a head, a pair of shoulders, and

                        gleaming buttocks.

                   5.   Meanwhile the drone, standing a little way off,

                        waited for Her to need him again to feed Her

                        with the produce of the earth, to defend Her

                        against  wild animals and the flaming sword, and

                        to  fertilise Her.

                   6.   She leaned over Her polycephalic, teeming

                        posterity;

                   7.   She threw her shadow over them, brooded over

                        them with Her tender, fecund gaze,

                   8.   Averted Her eyes from  the drone, turned Her

                        back on  him, withdrawing him from the ways of

                        the future.

                   9.   He had accomplished his purpose: in the soaring

                        swarm his seed had been the first to reach Her;

                   10.  He would still serve as hewer of wood and drawer

                        of water,

                   11.  As maintainer of the race.

                   12.  The drone drew away unnoticed, took a knife and

                        carved an effigy in wood, held it in his arms

                        and rocked it back and forth.