African Statue

Why does he cry so loud?
Is he homesick living
amoung such gentle greenery?
Does out misted light
leave him stifled-
he whose horizon lies
thirty miles away
where he cannot reach out
to touch the nomad camels?

Is the autumn sky
too fragrant with rain?
He opens his mouth so wide-
is it to catch the sacred drops
so anxiuosly awaited in his country,
so shruggingly dismissed in mine?
Or does he gasp for breath
desperate for the desert air
sullied by sand by unpoluted
by our raucous fumes?

I am not of his world.
The desert camels and the sand
are not for me. Yet
I am uneasy in his presence.
I fear him in his elemental needs.
I have lost his joy in the rain
and the crispness of the clear October light.
The city's rush and rumble overwhelm
and heedless I inhale its exhalations.
I am too much of our world
and he recalls me constantly to his.

Sylvia Goodman