Spider

Anansi, black busybody of the folktales,

You scuttle out on impulse

Blunt in self-interest

As a sledge hammer, as a man's bunched fist,

Yet of devils the cleverest

To get your carousals told:

You spun the cosmic web: you squint from center field.

Last summer I came upon your Spanish cousin,

Notable robber baron,

Behind a goatherd's hut:

Near his small stonehenge above the ants' route,

One-third ant-size, a leggy spot,

He tripped an ant with a rope

Scarcely visible. About and about the slope

Of his redoubt he ran his nimble filament,

Each time round winding that ant

Tighter to the cocoon

Already veiling the gray spool of stone

From which coils, caught ants waved legs in

Torpid warning, or lay still

And suffered their livelier fellows to struggle.

Then briskly scaled his altar tiered with tethered ants,

Nodding in a somnolence

Appalling to witness,

To the barbarous outlook, from there chose

His next martyr to the gross cause

Of concupiscence. Once more

With black alacrity bound round his prisoner.

The ants—a file of comers, a file of goers—

Persevered on a set course

No scruple could disrupt,

Obeying orders of instinct till swept

Off-stage and infamously wrapped

Up by a spry black deus

Ex machina. Nor did they seem deterred by this.