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.]
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