Poem: The wild doves at Louis Trichardt

THE WILD DOVES AT LOUIS TRICHARDT

Morning is busy with long files                                                                                 1

Of ants and men, all bearing loads.

The sun’s gong beats, and sweat runs down.

A mason-hornet shapes his hanging house.

In a wide flood of flowers                                                                                         5

Two crested cranes are bowing to their food.

Form the north today there is ominous news.

Midday, the mad cicada-time.

Sizzling from every open valve

Of the overheated earth                                                                                           10

The stridulators din it in –

Intensive and continuing praise

Of the white-hot zenith, shrilling on

Towards a note too high to bear.

Oven of afternoon, silence of heat.                                                                           15          

In shadow, or in shaded rooms,

This face is hidden in folded arms,

That face is now a sightless mask,

Tree-shadow just includes those legs.

The people have all lain down, and sleep                                                                   20

In attitudes of the sick, the shot, the dead.

And now in the grove the wild doves begin,

Whose neat silk heads are never still,

Bubbling their coolest colloquies.

The formulae they liquidly pronounce                                                                          25          

In secret tents of leaves imply

(Clearer that man-made music could)

Men being absent, Africa is good.