Lightning Bird of Africa

Africa, where spirits abound,

The baleful and the benign!

The seer breathes life into the bones;

They open their eyes,

Smile, walk and speak.


Man from elsewhere, who are you?

What do you dance?

I dance the crocodile,

The antelope,

The aardvark,

The baboon,

The porcupine.


In the beginning was the Great Serpent,

Whose seven thousand coils gave birth to the stars

And the earth, gouging out rivers and streams.

See him now, moving in the river,

Lashing up waves in the sea;

See him rainbow the sky.


A woman astride a quern

Grinds the grain and sings.


A woman strikes her grindstone

And it rings like a gong.

Perfect. Without flaws.

The sky hears it and smiles with pleasure.


All across Africa,

The stones are growing, singing to themselves.


The new chief at his inauguration

Swallows a crocodile stone.

It is his head, his life, his power.


Have you seen how a captured snake,

After that first wild battle,

Never shows the same ferocity again,

Its spirit broken,

The will to be free lessening by the day?


A hamerkop stands in a pool of water,

Staring intently at its own reflection.

It knows the unknown.

It knows those things that vanish

When you look at them.

It stands alone.

It cannot be pointed at.

It indicates wizards, for it shares their powers.


Once in many generations,

The Lightning Bird,

Pursued by wind and rain,

Assumes human form.


A rock-gong hums

And the hills throb with one fundamental note.


Bare red mountains,

Waterless citadels with the smell of leopards,

Caves filled with paintings.

On one wall a witch doctor,

In mask and tail,

Poised on the ball of one foot,

Reaches out his hand

To cup an impala’s head.

The creature stretches forward its neck,

Meeting the sorcerer mouth to mouth

In a kiss,

The two of them sharing breath.

In the impala’s dark uterus

A pair of eyes stare out,

Bright and watchful.


The first men left their footprints

And we must follow,

In a world black, white and red.


The man struck by lightning

Got up and walked away.

The trees looked after him.

The rocks sang to him.

He wandered with leopards and antelopes.

He vanished in the mountains with the evening sun.


Under a thorn tree the black bull is sacrificed,

While the women chant shimmering praise;

A hammer stone strikes between the horns,

The throat is slit.

Let it rain, let it rain!


In the old days the people buried their dead

Sitting up, facing the rising sun.

But now the world is sad and the land is thin.

The old customs are forgotten.


But still there is water,

And water knows everything,

All secrets,

Mine and yours.