I look back to the halcyon days
When Mrs Johnson,
A comely widow, ran fruitful
Errands for the new railway, and for
Our undeveloped district.
A frail, little maid in green cardigan
And sable wool hat for new mourners,
She read the New Testament
With zest, from Matthew to Revelation.
And she battled with the stress of inheritance
At the foot of her husband’s death in a
Civil war.
Her only son had died in civil stress. . .

Before then,
She was a merry image of festal seasons,
Full of godly gap-toothed mirth.

Her inheritance, from the ceremony of death,
Were mere effigies
With hearts of calumny —like cruel
Neighbours who gossip from dawn
To dusk, speaking no iota of truth in
January, nor bearing good witness in
December.

Among themꓽ
Divorces, viragoes, astute harlots, and
Celebrated proprietors of bordellos.

Mrs Johnson laments the presence
Of a blinding yellow equatorial sun.
Says she, ”Misery in equator courses
Across the waist of here;
Stress and agony have built adobes
Among us,
And the Harmattan has departed with her
Cold . . .”

In the pall of this agony,
Snakes!

Now, shadows of floods rise high,
Like the tsunamis of restless Asia,
The height of disconsolate mountains.

Grey elephants trumpet in trepidation
Sallow, ululating leopards break the skins of
Their drums while summoning their kinsmen
For a hurried parley before the sun sinks . . .

Poor Mrs Johnson is in the midst of it all —
Like an eye in its own storm!