Village boy Impressions

Where are the showers?  Where is the dew,  That should be greening the fields?  The rains should be here A good month since or more.  Why is it not raining?  We should be looking forward to the harvest already, or turning the soft loamy earth, planting seeds, and tending the shoots. Instead, we are trapped in this  rainlessness, this heat, and lifeless brown.      Where is the new grass? that should be returning the cows,  to health and freshness? Delighting the sheep and the goats? It is no longer lateness when the fields  are brown in June. It is not a lateness of the rains,  When the stream is dry in August  It is the fightback, The revolt of an ailing Earth.  The rainmaker is sick; exhausted from our plunder, and our exploitation, from all our g nawing, burning, breaking,  pumping, dumping… From all of our greed. From all of our poison!  Droughts where once were floods Floods where once were droughts Dea...

I dig the earth for my saab and wokta and for the sweet intoxicating pito, I tender the sorghum to maturity. Daily, I commune with the land, turning it gently with my little hoe. For there is no higher delight than tending things that grow;  no smell more exciting,  than that of boiling pito; no sight more pleasing  than that of new green,  and colourful blossoms,  in the sweet morning sun!  This was my life, my work, my joy. And for many ages, good old weeds  and late rains were my daily song.  So we lived in peace and quiet;  this land and I each for the other  in unending consonance. Then they sent a sudden death  nicknamed 'Condemn', and plastered it over the growing green. It found its way into backyards and little rivers, poisoning the cowpea and the okra, and shriveling the sesame tendrils. All that was green and good  failed at their promise. It is death to all, this Condemn.  I will sooner have no weeds to cut, an...