The prospects of life bloom at noon
When the sun shines like the eyes of a
Grieving monster, whose stinging tears sparkle with
The lustre of frying oil.
With them come man, woman, cattle
And beast —all full of rustic life,
Smiling with the benevolence of an
Ancient community still intact with the good spirits
Of the past.
It’s roasting time.
And man can do nothing about it.
No man’s absence, no matter how powerful or feared,
Can stop the market from thriving.
Not even the king’s death or his sudden madness.
Life must go on as long as the souls throb on
With the rhythm of the spiritual beats.
It’s the dance of time, when drums sound loud
And with the confidence of travelling cadences
Coming from the bowels of evolving earth.
And the drumming doubles!
It echoes beyond the listening mountains yonder.
Balmed hips, of beasts and man, twerk resoundingly,
Rewarding themselves with the accoutrements of
Ceremonies, of the sound of intruding melody.
Among these, man is the factotum and the thresher of
The dung of migrating kine
That very noon of mulishness, man was abundant,
Multiplying his seeds among their stamens, withered and dehiscingꓽ
Man, woman, babe and suckling.
But, alas, at night, darkness descended on them all
With the seamless Stygian blanket, smothering the floating
White and grey clouds as we know them . . .
At nighttime
When all had ceased to exist, including burnt-out stars
Above the tumultuous skies,
Which had twinkled and twinkled until every light of strength
Departed from their fiery eyes and flaming breaths,
One soul only thrived —
An Azawakh — mottled, unfecund, cursed by an old, angry hunter,
And gaunt from the seven-year famine
Of Egypt, foreseen by Pharaoh in his two-fold dream —
Yes, the seven lean years!

Tonight the seven lean years have either ended or commenced.
We don't know exactly which one, for we are as confused as this
Wayward ceremony . . .
We will discern all through the voice of the drum,
When dawn cracks open, quietly,
With the slowness and gentleness of the hatching of eggs.