Tribute to the Rivers Flowing Northwest

It wasn't in a shoddy ersatz of nature,

Man made pool,

Nether was it wasn't in a lake, trapped water,

It was in a fast flowing river -

Deep as a lake,

Wide, beyond eyesight can permit to visualise,

Long enough, running from South to North Pole,

Tumultuous and thunderous,

That muzzles low flying combat jet's noise -

That I began to swim back and forth,

Reaching out other people,

To share experience and mingle.

I had swum as far as the land of the pharaohs,

Right to the mouth of the salty sea and beyond,

Whose water I could hardly swallow,

Nor irrigate plants to grow.

Back and forth as I swam,

So expert I had become,

I felt I had turned to a creature of the swamp.

As I had no worry,

The load I had to carry,

I had grown leviathan in size,

And as I swam back and forth,

I had then marshalled umpteen retinues and protégés -

From near and far, different in size and shape,

Speaking different body languages-

Who lived off crumb that failed short of my mouth,

Or rotten morsels stuck to my teeth.

And the swimming went on inexorably back and forth,

And as I had no worry,

The load I had to carry,

Of course except at the estuary,

The outer shell of mine began to grow more leviathan in size,

In tune with my dreams and the things fantasised.

But then my poor little heart encounter unforeseen difficulty:

Pumping abundant blood,

Round an over-inflated bodily property.

As it happens mischance took over,

One fateful day, back and forth as I swum, I burst asunder.

My remains dispersed and scattered all-over,

And my blood mingled with the river.

Be that as it may, in no time to occur,

Over the spoils the retinues and protégés started to quarrel.

The collop and the rest were expeditiously gobbled.

But the blood,

Oh, yes the blood,

Had turned the river vermilion mud.

However, to my surprise, the gourmands,

And their insatiable appetite unbridled,

As if protecting them, I had not stood on guard,

The vermilion soup with suds and magenta scum -

Like the one seen in a swamp –

Not only in it did they wallow,

But also they began to guzzle and hearty swallow.

Then all of a sudden the river,

That I knew and lived almost forever,

Feeling lugubrious and resigned,

Started to wane, its bank their green stole denied.

I Know I am long gone and could not be found nigh,

But perchance you could hear the jeremiad and my cry.

Don't let the river, that I am, die.

Copyright Haileselassie Girmay

29/12/98