Violet-skinned women in the baobab shade
Stand lissom and sinewy, vital as leopards,
Their eye-whites glowing in the darkness,
Facing adversity with courage and humour.
This bare thin land, where every rock and clod
Is known in the bones, is their mentor.
The flame trees are in bloom, vermilion blossoms
Against the blankness. Thin smoke-skeins drift up
Into empty sky , as the people burn the remains
Of last year’s crops.
Nothing but a few skinny trees and giant pink termite hills
Emerge from the parched grey brittle earth.
Pink sand of the streets, littered with animal droppings,
Brittle grey thatch, mud walls and rusty iron rooves,
Scrawny goats and chickens moseying around,
Naked and brilliant in the hard white light...
Magenta petals swirl over the dusty ground...
During long Ramadan afternoons, the women
Sprawl beneath the mango trees, dazed and speechless
From fasting, their shirts discarded to air their breasts,
Some picking lice from one another’s hair,
Others staring at nothing with expressionless eyes.
Red earth riddled with termite holes,
Red dust covers the grasses, bushes and trees,
And a branch attacked by the termites
Crumbles, at a touch to powder,
A shell of dust, hollowed out from within.
Early evening and the village starts suddenly into life:
Pestles thud in eager syncopation,
Faster and faster as the breaking of the fast
Approaches, the holy relief,
Children run about, excited, chattering,
The yellow millet stalks incandesce in the setting sun,
The pink sand turns lilac in the dusk,
In the light of a hurricane lamp, shining
On their joyful faces, Koranic students sing a long refrain,
Voices of boys and men chiming together,
Led by the white-robed teacher, head thrown back,
His undulating chant reaching into the darkness,
Supported by the surging chorus...
A feather moon hangs upside-down in pale lilac sky,
Framed by a mango tree;
The people all come out to greet it and rejoice.
Dangerous afternoons when the sunlight
Throws a shadow-mesh over colourless brittle vegetation,
Tone, shadow and substance all blend into one,
One can so easily lose one’s way or one’s mind here,
In the bush of ghosts and devils.
There are people who have gone insane
Or died long agonized unexplained deaths
Because of what they have seen here.
Towards evening the mango leaves rattle,
The dust starts to rise in gusts from the ground,
The women at the wells hurry for home,
The wind hurls litter at the clattering roves
And the first fat raindrops start to fall.
In the morning the red-puddled earth
Sprouts new grass, and the sky is bursting
With white clouds. The men tread barefoot
In the gardens, pushing maize and sorghum seeds
Deep into the black soil with their toes.
Eagles soar above, and cattle crash through undergrowth.
In the ricefields women bend double, hoeing,
Hacking at the grey crust till the violet starts to show,
Singing in Mandinka, opening up the earth,
Exulting in laughter, argument and discussion,
All joining in the same rhythm and chorus,
Chorusing over and over till the air vibrates
To their drum, and some even throw down their tools
And begin to dance, stamping the ground.
Pausing to wipe the sweat from their brows.
The laterite road glows deep orange.
In the evening vast violetgrey clouds steam in,
The baobabs emit unearthly light,
The wind writhes through the shuddering grass
And massive raindrops splash down all over
In furious spasms, as lightning forks out
To the very nerve-ends of the sky
And the earth leaps about like a maddened toad...
In the morning swirling currents of moisture
Seethe out of the earth, and the drenched flora,
The women, all brilliant pink, blue, red and yellow,
Hurry along the paths out of the village,
Hoes over their shoulders, exhilarated...
Dungbeetles toil over heaps of cattledung,
Rolling it into balls, pushing it away over the ground
With their back legs.
Slim green-gold rice spears shoot straight up
And lines of millet fountain from the earth...
The termite hills are collapsing back into the earth,
Thousands of tiny brown grubs swarming round..
Skeletal starved curs lie curled up,
Flies buzzing round their sores,
When they have no their choice they go
And dig up corpses in the cemetery to eat
And then the villagers will hack them to death with their hoes.
The aged marabout, tall, very thin, in pale blue robe,
Carrying a staff and Koran wrapped in cloth,
Walks to the mosque along the red dust road.
In his house he crouches amid the smoke
On a worn sheepskin, saying in thin cracked voice:
“The world lasts but a moment, and all
Who refused God’s word will be cast into the fire...”
Tall, slender beauty, features smooth and still,
Immemorial as an ancient Egyptian sculpture,
With just the hint of an ironical smile...
Might a jealous demon not inhabit her
And coax her to the brink of a deep well
Or to the topmost branches of a tree
And make her jump to her death?
Beneath the placid faces and resigned smiles
Of the good respectable people
Malice and resentment stir the pot,
The suppressed tensions ready to disrupt
The peace at any moment. All jealous
And suspicious of each other, they dread
Their own wickedness being released.
Let it sound again, the legendary music
From the courts of Mali-xylophone orchestras
And young girl choirs raising their voices
In joyous wailing, and suddenly a woman
Crying out, agonized, from beyond the world,
Invoking the spirits, the air’s black riders...
The rice brims, shimmering, between the iron baobabs,
Stretching away into the distance.
The women, by ones, twos and threes, move
Through the fields, cutting the plump grain.
This is their dominion, the grandmother’s realm,
Liberated from men’s polluting gaze,
The arena of initiation and circumcision,
Where secrets are imparted in the night,
And their laughter carries through the air,
As pestles thud in the encampments,
Drumming the harvest of hidden knowledge.
In the evening light they shuffle back to the village,
Laden baskets bobbing on their heads,
The cloud-patterns rippling over and through them,
And, at night, in the square, glowing in the light
Of hurricane lamps, they run towards the drummers,
Spinning round at the last moment to dance,
Every sinew in play as the pummelling rhythms
Of taut skins force their souls,-see them whirl,
Stamp and clap in a rush of bliss and relief.
The bush is burning, and the roadside covered with ash.
Leaves hang frazzled from blackened branches.
Under the orange moon, a parade of hunched silhouettes
Moves silently through the undergrowth, a tribe
Of baboons, the males leading the females,
The young clinging to their chests.
Dry season: the world is a discarded husk,
Porous and dusty, under the scourging sun,
The air molten glass bulging and writhing
In monstrous shapes, reducing everyone
To numbed blanks, while skinny lizards
Scamper up the mosquito netting...
At night auroras of sparks rise in the darkness,
Trees outlined by fire,-the whole world
Is tipping and tumbling into the flames...
The next day the land is blue smoking waste,
Black smoke towers out of the bush,
Eagles hang on the shuddering heatwave.
One night, in the lamplight, look-a lump
Of matter jumps out of the mud, and rolls away,
A pair of mating toads, the mounted male holding tight
As they bounce along the ground, still coupling,
And disappear back into the undergrowth.
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