No songs of cicadas –
only a sighing silence
where, once,
as I walked below the yellow leaves
of fresh foliage,
a spray of urine
moistened my face
and a shrill of symphony
waned into my ears.

We have no ancestors
no shrine to pester with our prayers
no sacred cave where to drum our drums
and no svikiro to evoke the gods of rain
so we live on
without rain, without harvest.

No whistle of a bird,
no flutter nor flap
amid the brown fingers of trees
without leaves
when spring’s lushness
should be wiping my tired eyes
and dipping gleams of sunshine
into the young leaves.

Where shall we find the way back?
opaque darkness guards our exit
we have groped and groped until
our eyes were almost blind and
it was hard to rediscover.

So we live outside the burning flames of our thirst
we live the lives of locust-hunting rooks,
but even then where are the rooks
for I have neither heard a caw
nor seen a black patch in the sky:
the day we shall know the way back
to the caves of the ancestors,
the lion tongue of death will be licking
the last gush of blood from our souls.