A Poem Not Entirely Unabout Anthropology
On the inside cover of B. Kojo Laing’s Search Sweet Country, I have transcribed one of the author’s better poems:
The bush as bush is no bush
Hmmmmm.
The bush as bush is no bush,
lions if there would part it,
small birds would bend its savannas
with their innumerable landings,
and wild rabbits in thousands of lines
would place their dung there, there.
The bush as bush is no bush,
for more of me is there than leaves,
more of the battles inner and outer,
more of the silence of quarrelling lovers.
And the leaves that pass other leaves waving,
fit finely into my hand.
The bush as bush is no bush,
for we clear it everyday as we do hearts,
even as the lions scatter
raising the breeze with their
high haunches higher.