Lyrics of Reason and Experience

The Hard Hit Drought

88 The Hard Hit Drought (In memory of the 1992 drought in Southern Africa) Days of hot dry air accumulated into weeks Into fortnights and into months All: People, Plants, Animals, And even the mother earth Waiting for the rain In what used to be a thick forest I watched Trees bowing down their heads in grief as they pray for deliverance Their roots, trunks, branches and leaves All dressed in sorrow as they thirsty and hunger for life In the fields I watched helplessly As I saw Master Farmers’ scores of months of hard labour wasted Reduced to spittle dust Their monies buried to rot as if was a sacrifice to mother earth Leaving them with gloom hope and heads bowed in sorrow All in one prayer ‘God, why have you forsaken us?’ In the sky The sun had fought its fierce wicked battle against cloud 89 It was all blue from east to west, north to south Even the Zaire-Congo winds could not garner the courage to enter the ring To fight sun the ruthless warrior For trees and birds had refused to form allies with them to fight sun With a hopeless heart I carried my mosquito body down to the weeping forest Not to console her but to add salt to her bleeding wounds Digging fiercely her desperate roots Wicked sun watching With a smile in his face God forbid Even sun must have mercy on us We couldn’t resist The thinking that Lucifer had grabbed the keys of heaven from the angel of rain and ran mad To starve the people and force them into his kingdom Only after several months of desperate waiting Perhaps when the angel of God got hold of him, he who had stolen away the keys That is when we saw wind now cooperating Clouds in action – in real combat Uniformed Plants dancing unceasingly Whistling and ululating to encourage wind and cloud not to lose hope At last sky was pregnant Then it happened ...