On discovering a failing bee-hive 06.06.210.

They were general bees

coming and going

to the trenches

dressed in livery,

marking out their time and duty,

sliding, charmed, down the crevasse;

burring out luxuriously.



I watched one,

smaller than the rest,

paler, labouring his way out,

saw his particulars,

his clambering doom.

They were all marked men

marching out

from that moment

onwards.