On a green June day at the public animal farm,

The monkey-house was alive with human alarm.

Before I could smell, the shouts seemed to mean harm.

Then the noise had a level above danger, of delight

Howled, hurled, and a level below, of shove and fright,

And of stumbling and bumping in a big room at night.

It was boys and men bedeviling a black baboon.

He danced their dance, he in mahogany hewn,

Their flesh caricaturing his half-human cartoon

Of their ape-thrashing, ape-screaming, old stone age

Hullabaloo, happy to battle at last the outrage

Of being on whichever side of the bars of a cage.

What one lost in dignity, the other made,

In mutual and fortissimo serenade.

But the women lugging children were afraid.

Their feet shuffled an undertone of woe ,

The dull distrust of men all women know.

They were no help to us, but they would not go.

Whatever woman's work, it is not to see

That this is man's world, full of man manfully

From himself forever struggling to be free.

I elbowed in, because nobody understood

What I meant. I had to yell as loud as I could.

When he made faces, I made one twice as good.

Try and get in, he said. Try and get out,

We said. Who wants to get out? he yelled. Our shout,

His scream, you, you, was what it was all about.

Thus what had seemed unseemly stink and storm,

With a little thought became man's noble norm,

On a green June day at the public animal farm.