Classic Poem

Staring at every shadow, starting at every sound;
Raising his nose to the chilly night, sinking it now to the ground;
Craning his head from side to side; faltering, nervous and lame;
Back by a half-forgotten path, the old hyena came.

The span-less wagons block'd the roads,
New dead the cattle lay,
When from the North the dread disease
Swept down, Umtali way.
The rinderpest swept down and past,
And travell'd to the South—
And Tika lived the life he loved,
The fresh bone in his mouth.

The vultures sat on every tree
To watch a dying beast,
At night the grey hyenas came
And scrambled for the feast.
But now green mealie-fields had grown
Upon the quarantine—
Nothing remain'd to Tika now
To show what once had been.

‘Aha! These fields are green and new,
The smell of man is here!
The smell of bone and hide is gone:
The breeze is fresh and clear;
The roads are new, I cannot find
The tracks I used to tread
In coming from the kloof above
To seek the newly dead.

Who-o-ee! These hills are all too cold,
And I'll go back again—
Back to the warm dry-river beds,
To the bush-veld and the plain.
Tika is cold (too cold—too cold
This bitter East wind blows!)
And he'll go back to the warmer North
Where the great Zambesi flows.’

Gasping in fear at a passing mouse, grasping a whiten'd bone;
Splashes of yellow on dirty grey; evil and sullen and lone;
Craning his head from side to side; drooping his nose to the scent;
Back by a half-forgotten path, the old hyena went....