Kwikila

We've had a two-week stretch of brown drought here, and in the last few days this poem has been coming to my mind over and over again. Beatrice posted it at the Beehive a couple of years ago. Unfortunately she didn't know the author, and as I can't find anything more about it online it will have to stay anonymous. It's no less powerful for that.



Kwikila

Two still-green trees rub together
as if for reassurance
that the wind that grates
will carry too;
carry clouds, heavy clouds,
full clouds and black;
to fall and to dampen,
to drench and to soak —
deep into the pores of the earth.

The stream-beds are paths
for the lizard and the snake;
the reed-beds are brown
and blackened — (last week,
another fire went along there)
and the boulders which
rolled along
in the floods are quite still;
still with the stillness
of tragedy brewing,
still with the stillness
of death.

Men curse the wind
for its transitory promises—
dark clouds build up
(and our hopes with them too)
and are blown away;
or, worse still, come over,
intact and inticing,
to cynically spatter
verandahs and faces
before passing on . . .

A desk — and textbooks strewn;
lately my eyes have been wandering
more and more. But my window
still frames the same picture
of a bright, empty sky
(called gorgeous in Sydney, where
storm clouds abound),
and grass, grey with despair—
dust hangs in a curl
(thrown up by a wheel);
it seems, almost, to have
been hanging there
for months now.

O Lord, I murmur,
and murmur again-

Please send us rain.




[In the calm of the evening the clouds broke today, and after two weeks we at last had rain. - Tim]