Tortifrogs Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

Two races mixed and produced one tribe.
They called themselves tortifrogs, for
They resembled mother frog and father tortoise.
The frog could sing loud, the tortoise could not.
The babies started the song.
The frogs told them they were too young to sing a
funeral song.They croaked and croaked,
jumping up and down and nobody liked their tune.
They invaded every pond and could
deafen heaven with their noise. Nobody could dance
for their song was strange. Then they sang even louder,
till all people went mad. The big shut up came
from the soldiers. So sick was the nation of them.

So the battle went on, tortoises even
borrowing guitars from the village boys,
only to find the frogs louder in their usual.
Asking the tortifrogs to sing loud, the
tortoises loaned them the guitars. The
village boys watched in amusement.
They were looking for a winer.

Sing tortifrogs sing. It is your world, too,
the elders said. 'We are trying and cannot
be louder, for the throats we have were
transformed by the new genes.
We have learned the tune but the older generation
cannot be silenced. They call it culture
this singing of tunes that make the hair
stand on edge. The voices loud even make their
throats hoarse. When they say we must join,
we squeak and the ducks laugh.
They tell us we could be better off quacking.
Now the song has gone into a low key that no one can sing.
That is what we get for following a conductor who cannot sing.
He quacks and tells us he has come to
make the best of a bad situation, and will make the marshes great again.
Yes tortoise still has his head right inside his shell.
He says he is waiting for the next vote, so
he can play the trumpet in the band and bring
a lot of rain to these marshes inhabit. God
help us and put a stopper in our ears for
when he sings every note turns into a strange
tune never heard, and also a string of profanities'.

People will still rather live among the ducks
and watch the battle in the land of the tortifrogs,
where mouths open and nothing
comes out, for the frog turned tortoise
says sound or no sound let us blame it on
nature.

The frogs go on shamelessly arguing. They
say inside their white frothy house, a sound,
is a sound. We all have to listen, to what they sing
for that is called politics. They say we are all immigrants
so we are at their mercy for they created the tune.
If we want to sing, we must return to the land of our birth.