Tarzan Poem by Robert Dawson

TARZAN

Of hartebeast, waterbuck,
wildebeast, the nuzzle-nuzzle
and the guzzle-guzzle by still
sulphury pools. Aaie! Aiie! Small hooves
make big thunder on the veldt. Is it
Simba, the lioness, that ochre speck
in the sunrise, skulking? Or only
a witchman's tree, orange-kindled
by the burst yolk of dawn. Dust-devils
dance with jaundiced feet the dusty blue.
Distance does not deceive, but affords
no easy truth.

Black Africk's telegraph,
dry thighbones on hollowed logs, precedes
me through the brush. I am Tarzan,
jackal and cheetah mate beneath my reign,
Brazza and Zanzibar mark my domain.

Waugh! Noon is a Mau Mau
tattoed and blood-bellied, shakes out
his headdress over the jungle. A python
ripples the monkey-bread leaves, and
"Look up! Look up! " scold the jacamars
with scarlet beaks. Lianas web the noon
and afternoon in one great simmering heat
till howlers hoist your senses off their feet.

Under the lemon shadow of a baobab
I welcome strangers to a noonday feast
of kafir and kola nuts, roast warthog, cassava
melons, pomegranates, shea butter, sesame,
and when we've had enough of these
I know a snow-fed lake with banyan trees.

Down current, past bellowing hippos, yellow
with mud and dusk, past kraals where water bearers
bare their long brown breasts, past ivory
trading stations, smirking snaggle-tusk,
O Dark Zambesi, float me to the Indian Sea.
Chacma and chimpanzee, be my watch. The cobra
daylight coils and withdraws her sting
and voodoo darkness plummets on pumping wings.