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PoetryJune 19, 2012

Darwin and the Wasp – A Sceptic’s Sestina

Embracing Life and Death by Syed Ali Wasif

Embracing Life and Death by Syed Ali Wasif

Ichneumonidae, hymenoptera: leaded-glass
wings, inkblot thorax bruised with words
of doubt. A tract that no religious man –
when Paley’s prose dictates there is a God –
would ever read aloud, or dare to whisper.
It looks out, alive, through warm amoral eyes.

Darwin, beard of moths and fossil eyes,
sips chai tea from a crystal glass.
Pushing along his pen’s soft whisper
he sows his page with words.
The summer air’s abuzz with breath of God.
The garden is a world to such a man.

And so it is that such a man
should see among the shrubs, with pious eyes,
the ichneumon wasp – the scythe-tailed God
and Reaper to the worms. He drains his glass,
and kneels before the plants. He finds no words
he comprehends within its sinner’s whisper;

his heartbeat trills a devil’s whisper.
He reaches out a hand, like a beaten man.
The ichneumon alights; he’s lost for words.
Its legs are bars around his wedding ring. “I…”
He stops, confused. He overturns his glass
to trap the wasp, observing like a god.

“…I know not what good-hearted God
would work to this design,” he whispers.
A straining larva lies outside the glass
and with cruellest curiosity of Man
he pushes it beneath, with narrowed eyes.
He scribbles something – incoherent words –

and the wasp translates these words
to wings, swaps death for life – a swindler god –
sets upon its life-warm host with hard maternal eye –
abdomen throbbing, legs a warning whisper –
packs the flesh with eager eggs, paralysing man
and worm. Its body’s a syringe of black glass.

A cynic’s eye outside the crystal glass
blinks out, fatal, “there is no God but Man” –
irrevocable words – a new wasp’s foetal whisper.

—Camille Ralphs

 

Camille Ralphs is currently a second-year student at Lancaster University, reading English Literature with Creative Writing. She has previously been published in The Crocodile and in Durham’s Inkapture e-magazine.

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Camille RalphsIssue 6June 2012Syed Ali Wasif

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One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

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