papRika

(a rondeau)

There’s water on the moon, they say,
enough to wash the grit away
from eyes alit by this detour
mapped out by Greed’s cartographer
who mocks the herd, this way, This way …

I bled the green valley Monday,
all the veins ran dry by Sunday,
while to my children I proffer
the water on the moon, the Moon

they say, which we will reach one day -
my children and cattle today
tramp, tramp the dust even further
to the Rift Valley abattoir
where our bulldozed carcasses lay
bathed in the water on the moon.

© Sara P. Dias

The suffering of hundreds of thousands of animals dying and rotting where they fall, and the slaughter of the emaciated stock that survive being driven over long distances in search of green pasture by starving herders and their dying children, is heart-rending. The headlines are everywhere: The devastation sweeping across Kenya is but one example of prolonged drought caused by climate change, expanding populations, deforestation, overgrazing, crop failure, mismanagement of water resources, corrupt government officials who sell off emergency food, and violent ethnic conflicts over competition for resources. And still we don’t change our behaviour.

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