Children's Python

Children's Python

She is no friend of mine, but we have reached
a modus vivendi: : she will not startle me again
at night when I am outside in the garden
watching the storms annihilate the stars;
I will not startle her when she silently glides
from underneath the bungalow to hunt;
nor will I drive her out, the mottled python,
from the crevice where she thinks herself invisible,
though she has eaten the solemn green frog
who nightly came to the door to gorge on termites.

For the great and garrulous company of the frogs
can lose one or two singers, and the universe
will not be much the poorer, but the Children's Python
who lives beneath my bungalow, when she goes,
will leave a gaping hole in the fabric of things
though only I, and the frogs, will notice.

And it is no easier to be a python than a man,
in this camp, where men kill snakes because they are:
and therefore I have kept her presence secret,
although she is a snake, and no friend of mine.