A Fools Eden

[Thoth]

What fool has gone this way before
and left a trail that other fools might choose to follow?

Endless dry gulch canyons
threaded vein-like through desert plain
toward the Great Gariep – slumbering
somewhere beyond the seventh mountain.

A narrow bed of sand, and broken stone twists
between frowning painted walls, now white,
now red, now black -
Folded layers of naked rock,
Writhe like David’s cloak in the heat-waves.

Watching us from shattered quartzite ridges,
Halfmense, (half human trees) stand sentinel.
Their pact with God compelling them to stare
eternally northward
in hope of fulfilment.

What makes a home in this bleak wilderness
of crags in flight, where only jagged stone
can offer meagre shade? Who walks by day
where even Satan fears to tread
and God once rested on the seventh night?

Why am I here, forgotten by the wind
but not the sun?

Ah! (you say) but look, there has been rain!
plants shimmer green and flowers trickle
between the gaps of sintered rock.

Small creature crawl and creep - and eat each other,
crying in the night beneath the stars and
see! - the eagle hunts from that unclouded sky!

Perhaps it was that Adam passed through here,
when seeking Eve in Eden far away or
Moses led the Children on his quest and spoke
with God up there that fateful day?

But no, these things were only yesterday in holy time!
This place, this road is old - beyond our mortal ken.

That mountain has forgotten when in youthful pride
it challenged God and paid penance til stooped
in humility, saw the first strange creatures
emerge out of their primal soup.

What fool am I to drive this sacred road,
on arrogant wheels that taint the desert air
and growl dual paths across the naked land?

Just who am I to challenge un-sandaled feet
that scuffed the mountain’s flaking scars
in times when bone and stone and fire were prize
of mankind’s meagre arsenal?

What right have I to crush one single thorn
that holds within its humble DNA
more compassion than all Mankind, then leave -
my tyre marks smirking black on
sun-bleached stone?

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Rightersveld Desert Wilderness, Northern Cape. February 2006