Four Villages

Kibaani

Red pearls like earring clusters on coffee bushes
Feeling cooked, I slap lotion on all the shell-white of me
"What is the function of this? asks Bariki

Olevolos

Girls doing laundry. The daughter at the gate
water-bucket tipping - she's Beth. An opium black Beth
Her father with his ear deformed, dangling like a jelly thread

Kimnyaki

Swords of sugarcane, skinned with a farmer's machete
We buy them, and munch them to splinters and froth
that pours as from an ale-glass, makes the dust broth

Olmuringuringa

End of the trail. The circumcision ceremony
in full swing. Boys like me, but painted white
to look like lived-in skulls, or not quite

And the elders jump like giant grasshoppers
jarring the earth, which is rich as a Pharoah
I a stray lash in the eye of Mount Meru