Classic Poem

Drought is upon the land,
And distress overshadows
The dwellings of the Dark People.
Huddled together in narrow spaces,
The Dark People are packed
Into pigmy habitations,
Into huts as innumerable,
And almost as unnotable,
As ant-hills that mottle
The wide stretches of the veld.
At the coming of Spring
The men toiled from dawn to dark,
Ploughing the lean, long-suffering fields
And scattering the golden mealie.
Then, after the bleached yellow-shoots
Stole furtively from the broken soil,
And bloomed into green, glossy plants—
Plants scintillating with hope—
Women and maidens hummed and chanted
As they toiled through long, hot hours,
Hopefully hoeing the shining mealie-fields.

But the longed-for rain came not,
And the people looked in vain
To the heavens for a sign.
Some there were amongst them
Who sought their temples
And prayed for rain:
The red-blanketed heathen did otherwise:
They killed the fattest ox
And prepared a feast for the witch-doctor—
The invincible Rain-maker.
But the Rain-maker manipulated
His dry dolosses in vain;
His medicines were ineffectual,
And his incantations useless:
The shimmering fields of mealies
Became dull and bleached
As relentlessly they were scorched
By the sun's dragon-breath;
Slowly they shrivelled and crumbled,
With dry rustling whispers—
Ghostly as the midnight lamentations
Of a ragged newspaper
Caught in a rosebush—
They crumbled to dust.
Then the cattle died: and famine drew near.

The young men and the middle-aged men
Arose and journeyed northward,
Away to the Ridge-of-White-Waters,
There to labour and sweat
In the dark belly of the earth,
Shut away from the pleasant sunshine
And the free air of heaven.
Pity these poor, simple labourers—
Pastoral people, dwellers in the open,
Nourished on sunshine—
Now condemned to burrow like blind moles
In the inner darkness of the earth.
Grimly they toil through night-like days,
Dreaming of their sunlit kraals
And their hungry women and children.

Only the old men,
The women and children,
Now remain in the desolate dwellings
Of the Dark People.
The women rise, before the morning-star,
And hasten away to draw water
At distant wells, now daily drying up.
As they return dejectedly,
With cans of muddy water
Balanced upon their heads,
The few starved sheep and goats
(All that are left of the livestock)
Scenting the water
Totter after the women
Bleating dismally:
But that mud-stained water
Is more precious than pearls,
And the thirst-stricken animals
Cry for it in vain.

The brown calabashes—
The thin-necked, big-bellied calabashes—
Have long been empty and dry;
The stone-mouthed cellars
Under the cattle kraals,
Strong-rooms and treasuries,
Wherein reserve mealies are stored,
Have been sadly and reluctantly raided,
And will soon be empty:
The last of the water-wells
Is almost dry: the people will perish.
Drought is upon the land,
And there is wailing and distress
In the dwellings of the Dark People.