Ama: the Song of the Jungle

Ama you are a father Father my father Whose basket of fishes Sweetened my mother’s dishes Whose naked feet danced The jungle drum you drummed. I remember Father I still remember Those joyous days When like brooding hens You employed your hands To shield the offsprings Those several bodies O! the little bodies That clung to your bare wide chest Like the eaglets unto their nest! I remember The sun-burnt days of the hunted panther When the full moon-light chimed The rhythms of jungle drum drummed Rhyming with the story told By the white-haired. Then your roaring march Along the prime paths of the forest Then your rustic touch Touching the weapon-hilt Making carcasses of beasts Making fresh clan feasts. I still remember The raw feasts of the drummer Which strewed this universe Like young Mbari warriors Taking the spear from several clans Turning their crowns into tributes! Ama, you are the drummer Whose communal tongue echoed From the hidden chambers of the Niger The drum of your conquests echoed Everywhere in the universe Like the gusto of the Sheik Confiscating my land from the Sahara In her eternal desiccation. You are the royal father Whose royal eyes woo the moon Whose black hairs detain the sun Like Joshua at Gibeon Even in the deep valleys of Ajalon Bringing the heavens to abrupt halts When their course possesses progress. O, Ama! you are a noble father And like the gold-laying eagle my Africa Your natural pocket flowers gold Which fills the coffers of the household. O Ama! you are our race The clan greets her farmer The tiller of my earth The earth of the ancients The ancients of my blood The blood of my race. The clan is still drumming On the drum that now is a mere echo Of the eternal rhythm of your drum Ama, you are still our clan’s song; O, you are my song The song my jungle The jungle of my blood The blood of my race: A race Waiting Now and ever In a forlorn clan Awaiting A return of the drum?