Long long ago when the world was a wild place

Planted with bushes and people by apes, our

Mission Brigade was at work in the jungle

Hard by the Congo

Once, when a foraging detail was active;

Scouting for green-fly, it came on a grey man, the

Last living man, in the branch of a baobab

Stalking a monkey.

Earlier men had disposed of, for pleasure,

Creatures whose names we scarcely remember— ;

Zebra, rhinoceros, elephants, wart-hog,

Lion, rats, deer. But

After the wars had extinguished the cities

Only the wild ones were left, half-naked

Near the Equator: and here was the last one,

Starved for a monkey.

By then the Mission Brigade had encountered

Hundreds of such men: and their procedure,

History tells us, was only to feed them:

Find them and feed them,

Those were the orders. And this was the last one.

Nobody knew...