Oh, what Remembrance. .
How unlucky Tigrai
You are born just that
Only to die.
Hope you resurrect and revive!
The hubbub you are part of,
And the constant move, albeit nature bound,
You must accomplish
For you to live longer and flourish,
Proved too much to cope with.
You are heavy,
Looking tired, looking wary
Months on end
The ever growing seed
inside you have to carry.
Nonetheless, you keep trudging
To match the pace
Set by the rest,
until no more you could.
Though the jaws are invariably clenched,
The lips hermetically sealed,
Clear white marks along the cleavage
There began to form bubbles of foam.
Then you hesitate, flail your head,
Judder the femurs
And you put back your front limb
Exactly on the same spot
From where it had been lifted.
And you jibbed – refusing to budge
Come what may!
Alas! Contraction has earnestly begun.
And if one is to go by
The wry countenance
And glazed eyes given to gawp
At but blank surface.
But it is not inopportune
Night has befallen by chance
And the predators’ cunning manoeuvres
had come to a halt,
As did the herds’ stampeding horror.
This land is paradise but at the same time it can be hell,
Where predators and prey reside at close quarters,
Almost touching head to tail.
One or two, possibly blood related,
Could be a sister and an offspring
But most visible the impregnator
Seemed to notice the convulsive pressure
She had been under,
And the pain you have to suffer.
It wasn’t like one of the craze,
Fighting a duellist when aroused
Or raising the dust and causing melee,
drumming out his macho bovine roar
Like the one heard while
chasing a receptive female.
This time it has to be but empathy
For he let out a falsetto bellow,
Reminding his fellows
One of theirs was unable to follow.
Bellowing and dragging their feet
As if wanting the others to heed their request
In the language they knew best.
Just before they reached the waterhole,
Near the foot of the gentle hills,
To their relief they brought the entire herd
To a standstill.
Feeling a stupor from excruciating pains
from the skull’s roof,
To the bases of the insteps,
All night long
You spent in a whirling world of her own.
Alack! At dawn
You caved in and hit the floor.
At last, slowly but steadily
With every pain and groan
You performed a miracle,
A living being was born.
Hayelom:ሓየሎም
As always that there is an end to everything
The pain gave way to good feeling.
However shortly after
By a twist of irony
The story of the quarry-
Tigrai that you are-
Took a further needless journey.
All the trauma as if it was not enough,
Blood and the afterbirth
Sent the scent
For those with the qualifying smelling/ነፍጠኛ በል ኣስከሪስ sense,
And no sooner
The scene turned to a drama centre.
They descended from the air
And all ground corners.
The infighting and ensuing generaበሎ በሎ war,
That broke out between jackals, wild dogs and vultures,
As to who would devour the leftover,
Even contemplating the newly born,
Left nothing to be desired,
There is no grace,
For being a scavenger or a carnivore.
Disgusting blood soused snouts scuttling all over!!
That was one thing,
And the other:
Even though you as a mother did try your best,
Despite the bouncing delirious birth effects,
The newly born
Before it stretched its fledgling feet,
Broke its long fast latching onto the your breast.
Better yet, before it could realise who was a friend,
And who wasn’t
Began to get bitten right and left.
There is no doubt, the few bystanders chipped in their bit,
To stave off the intruders
And save the life that had just began
But they couldn’t.
The baby was gone, torn apart in bits.
Oh! Tigray weep as you might
Denied a moment of sigh,
A day of puerperal joy,
Your teats aching with milk
But no one of your own to feed, canoodle and lick.
Yours is an inane tragedy for a start,
Typical of the land
You happened to be part.
Call me a sardonic if you like
But I have to say your misery
Is nonchalantly endorsed by the rest,
Name them East or West,
Hedonistic parasites,
As an inevitable rule of the survival of the fittest.
Only to be recorded on films for the revelry of tourists.
Newspeak, humbug puffery!
By Belay Ambelay