To a Spirochæta

If through the microscope
We peer and stare
You look like marceled shreds of rope,
Or maiden hair,
With eyeless hunger swift to grope
Out of your lair.

To feed and to fulfill your fate
You dive and swim
Forward and backward flagellate
Amid the dim
Ichor of women where you mate,
Delicate, slim.

Why are you screw-shaped, in a spiral?
And why your form
Like a crooked hand upon a dial?
You are the norm
For all hell sealed up in a vial
To break in storm.

Your whips are sharper far than sickles,
Or cricket bristle;
With finer points than rose-leaf prickles,
Or drifting thistle;
You feed yourself till the blood trickles
Through flesh and gristle.

When a man knows he is your diet
A solemn thrill
Shows in great eyes and spirit quiet
For fears that kill;
He is a maelstrom running riot,
At the center still.

Well, Robert Burns: You saw a louse
On a lady crawling.
But one can keep to his own house
Without forestalling
This demon on his death carouse
Breeding and sprawling.

But, Robert Burns, this does not tent
Our pride or tease us;
It is not heaven’s message sent
That virtue frees us.
It shows us hard or penitent
As Nature sees us!