Cup of earth 13/08/03
By Jack Cade
- 1160 reads
We followed
tracks a hundred
jeep-deep,
an outline of shark-teeth, down to the
belly
of a great bowl of wildlife
a
retirement home for bull
elephants
But there's more to
it
more to the blood shimmer of moons and
capes
by herds and hyena
eyes
something the buffalo skulls hint
at
This pool: a museum, a chest of
relics,
An experiment in
taxidermy,
yes, where the plants bordering the
tracks
are like spined, stuffed
dragons
posed in mid-spring,
their
scales caked in the thick, red dust
of the
road.
The galaxies of dried blood
dust
The creeping iron oxide
dust
reaching over
everything,
making the land around as a great, ageing
machine
An engine of nature, choked and
stopped
blown and worn to an arthritic
clench,
a dirge, a dying
groan
And at the high rim, where
the forest
is a bulging moss, clouds
ride
over the edge and climb
down,
like the white dust-tail of a
charging
saracen army, ghosts of the
first
steely rain of civilisation
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