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Hoffman Aipira

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The Flood (Mozambique February 2000)

Cumulus clouds above southern Africa
Explode into heavy downpour. Each
Raindrop spills the seeds of destruction
Across swathes of geography plagued by
First rains of the millennium.

Spattering rains and ocean winds gusting
Converge overland into cyclone Eline,
Flattening bamboo huts, uprooting
Sizzling pylons and telegraph poles,
Tossing livestock like toys in its wake.

Bridges sag under the burden. Umbrella
Canopied trees, in whose shade men
Sat carving traditional hoe handles
And sharing gourdfuls of millet beer, swirl.

For weeks, rain-filled days and nights
Turn greening fields into an inland sea
Where cheerful communities drowned
With the noise of bustling life; stillness
Blankets corpses pregnant with rainwater.

A helicopter, rustling its wings above mutinous
Limpopo and Zambezi in flood, veers close
To the nerve ends of wind-battered treetops
Like a mechanical fruit harvester, plucks fatigued
Mother and her young from a sea misery.

Touched with hope, a window of joy in Mozambique
Opens. But which village sage remembers mothers
Fathers, children, chickens, cats and dogs, wet
To the bone, huddled in eternal supplication?

 

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