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I. The Beginning

Earth, your origin transcends the vapid

Proposal of primal prostitution

Between the cloud and dust, or

The aftermath of the heavy sinkage.

You are the bed on which water of

Life reclines: you are the root of life.

            My palm brushes past your claybed

            And my body stands erect as a wall

            Before the origin of its bricks.

II. Caryatid

I shall sing often of your fortitude,

Earth, as the caryatid of life’s burden.

I shall strap myself on your broad back

And sing of your fecund womb.

Tonight, I shall wait gently on the plinth

And watch the sky send emissaries of light

To sing the grace of your green hairs.

I wear myself in your colour, and sail

Beneath the waves scending above

The aquatic… and sing of you as haven

Of the living and the dead.

III. Lamentations

My gong cries your silent groans

Over the alopecic shaving of your green

Head. But ears of men rest upon the shoulders

Of shrugs. I weep the trauma of your haplessness

Against the penetration of iron phalluses

Reaching deep down your fragile bowel.

                       Who waits

                 For the obituary of the earth?

Man waits for the obituary of the earth.

But the earth rebounds, and shakes off

The garment of dust and rust; the liquid

Fingers of the sky splices it again into its greenness.

Who waits

For the obituary of the earth?

You may pollute mother earth with barrenness,

But the earth will rise again.

Who waits for the obituary of the earth

Meets her collecting his body as manure. But

The earth will never die.

But man is a stubborn goat:

He marauds the barn of Earth’s fury

And consumes the tubers of cancerous yams.

IV. Homecoming

When the origin of the seas calls back

The runnel in my body, and

The sky seeks back my soul, O mother

Earth, receive my stiff homecoming

At the expiration of my breath,

And perform the grafting that carries The ritual of my rebirth.