Human Rights


I'm the heart of a hen in the the breast of a duck,
A calf-liver stuck in a sheep,
The brain of a pea in the shell of a bean,
A bun from Dundee sold in old Aberdeen,
A squawk lying deep in a cheep.

I'm a modified egg on an apricot tree,
A tooth-fairy grown in a jaw,
A scalpel inside a geometry set,
A chiropodist crossed with a vole and a vet,
And I'm Straw in the craw of the law.

There's a torturer trapped in a diplomat's hat,
With a rat's arse which hides in his face;
There's a cancerous lump in the sump of my throat,
The bile of a weasel transplanted to stoat.
This should help with the whole human race.

[October 1998]

From Labour Pangs

Human Rights

Osaka scientists are to implant a genetically modified pig's heart in a baboon, to improve human transplant surgery.