His life was pure honey
and now he is dead--
I still hold the crab spider innocent.
Who the devil has a choice
among a hundred reprobates
dropped from a sticky cocoon?
Even as spiderlings,
arthropods are always hungry.
Are you so different, judge?
I wish I could shrink and tell
beetles about Jack the Ripper
and Mary Magdalene;
kindly shut up, Insect Watts,
if God protected honeybees
why did he make fangs?
Swarmy Ladybugs for Justice
want to see him crushed in sepals;
Jesus, let him go.
First published in Spring, The Journal of the E.E. Cummings Society
New Series Number 17
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