An African Tree Stump

On a dry African midday

Did I walk through so parched a land

That to the ground my soul was tamed

Such that I retreated to a tree stump—

Sat ‘til the sun to a horizon jumped.

But as moments leapt faster than th’ former,

I heard the tree calling, crying out

Like a pitied old man on his deathbed.

And it told me scandalous stories

Starting with its surroundings leased.

It first saw a suited white man

With a black local shaking hands.

When it woke up on the contract’s first day,

There’d been so vast a flowing field of crops

And a sea of bushes on the second.

“Blessed is the white man,” thought the tree,

“Giving a life healthy and free

As the starved locals he would feed

So the children would play with me!”

Though how forlorn was the tree on the third

When it woke up on a vast field of death

Beset by skeletons and withered plants!

“Oh how-now my hopes?” the tree sobbed,

“Cursed is the white man who had robbed

From my friends their hopes now undone

And so of my leaves and my trunk!”

[Then it asked me why I was too heavy

But mere silence was my answer ready.]