So what if he'd won big on X Tractor

that night with the other grinning hopefuls

of the combined Young Farmers of his county

but fame and its fickle flame didn't burn long

with the fattening catalogue of demise

and enough freshly signed death certificates

to fill a library of uncomfortable learning 

he should have been sated

busier than ever with 

the practiced condolences

the pressing of the flesh

and the liaising with 

the dependables of the funerary industry

despite this unexpected windfall

Tomb Jones was restless

seeing no end to a career 

of infinite possibility and beginning 

to despair even as his ISA multiplied

he spoke granite rather than Italian marble

and his wife complained that he was not urbane

enough for this stage of their union

fretting that she had not succeeded 

in niggling and nibbling away

all the burrs and bumps that constituted him

as ever he completely misheard her

confusing "urbane" with "urban" and snorting

"of course not dear we live down a farm track!"

he who had thought that Cinzano Bianco 

was somehow linked to that stranger Quixote 

hamboned enough to charge at a windmill

but when the day was over

the battered container of gossip emptied

and Death and his wife put to bed

his thoughts turned to a change of career

a new dawn a higher calling

on the reverse of a large used envelope 

propped up by the lectern of his pyjamed thighs

he began to draw the outlines of a combine harvester

sketching the insignia of the Red Cross on its flanks

and pencilled in military grade syringe-cannon

that could fire small darts of vaccine 

accurately into the unsuspecting arms

of anyone within a hundred yards 

doing away with the need for any sort

of organisation other than a simple timetable

and allowing thousands of health workers

to return to their wards to relieve their colleagues 

whilst ensuring that everyone was vaccinated

whether they wish it or not

he fell asleep satisfied that if he put his mind to it

he could harness his agrarian past

to a bright pharmaceutical tomorrow

and help broker a sort of medicated peace

a freedom that no one would suspect existed