Call To Prayer, Malawi 1963 Poem by Denise Woodhouse

A quick and early evening,
Swirled in rose red dust.
Blue gum trees obeyed perspective,
Standing back.
I could not have known of lack,
But the muezzin's wail
Unravelled a knot in me.

Africa, like no other elsewhere,
Has no electric outline
To look back at a sky white with stars
That once were mine.

In after years, wrought with noise,
Come to grief in Regent's Park Road,
I forget the swirl of petrol haze, the lack of stars.
A muezzin's electric wail
Calls on the lost. Poised
Above far-off, feathered trees,
On the wings of all the evenings
That can bring a life to its knees.