Across these frightful sands cows
once were driven
the grottoes in the riven hills
still depict their story
Here on the savannah sward
danced men and women, painted mask wearers,
creating gods from earth and sky,
the life givers, the healers,
the killers with blood
and the killers with insidious secrecy
Under the darkening ledges
lived a people, gay artistic
lovers of cattle
dwellers in round huts of brushwood
ritual makers whose evening glance
perceived green meadows, running streams
and great curved crags
mouthed with waterfalls
charged with a roar
of lions and of water
Gone now are the pointilliste giraffes
of the painter people,
gone the lions
and the waterfalls.
Terrible the landscape
bleached, parched beyond conception.
Only the mountains stand,
saharan chessmen
weirdly frozen in a forgotten game.
Only the paintings recall
the liveliness of these people
the fresh dawn of man,
love of animals, a
deep respect in this green country
of another age.