The hungry world was headed to famine

For want of nitrogen.

In the lab, you magicked bonded atoms from oxygen

And held up a flask.

Behold: ammonia.

A savior for the modern era.

Fertilize the belly of the world.

The earth made fat. Wheat and bread.

They gave you a Nobel Prize for that.

The angry world took their fight to the trenches.

They needed killing:

A poison fog for world war winning.

In the lab, you brewed a cauldron of chlorine,

Sent the lethal mist across the plain at Ypres,

Made the birds fall from the trees and

Drowned fighting men on dry land.

Their bloody sputum stained your hands.

The broken world needed cleansing,

Relief from vermin and pests:

Cockroaches, rats, beetles and bats.

In the lab, you reengineered the noxious cloud.

Voila! Shining orchards of deloused citrus trees,

Scoured ships, silos, mills, and granaries.

You banished pestilence, solved infestation’s ills.

They praised you, on bended knees, in pristine fields.

The dark world needed a convenient trope:

A heavy hand was hungry for a chosen scapegoat.

They sharpened long knives for slitting throats,

Crowded cattle cars heavy with a human load.

In the lab, once you were no longer the king,

They reworked your recipe for chemical sorcery.

You died enroute in Switzerland of heart disease,

As they pumped the gas chambers full of Zyklon B.

Feed the world.

Plump them up.

Gas them in trenches.

Cure them of lice.

Box them up.

Kill them like mice.

As with any human, dead or alive,

You were a house made of candy

With a witch inside.