Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DREAMING (A SONG OF AFRICA), by WALTER JAMES REDFERN TURNER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DREAMING (A SONG OF AFRICA), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I am a barbarian out of the sunless forest
Last Line: I hold a bright patch of the sky with those hills and earth's delicate antlers.
Subject(s): Africa


I AM a barbarian out of the sunless forest
Where the trees continually growing spread a murmuring shadow of thunder
Over the plains where the sunlight blooms in the golden grass.
And I dream I shall see the sunlight slowly, inexorably eaten
By those dark, slow-spreading impis that rise up out of the ground,
Their bushy headdresses shaking as they crowd to the edge of the plains.

Lovely are those bare hills where the slender-legged antelopes gather,
Their horns against the horizon in the clear grey light of evening:
And I stand at the edge of the forest and I see the red disc sinking,
And a million blooms hang drooping and their colours fade from the fields!

And when earth and sky are ashen, I turn back into the forest,
Among the huge trunks walking, a Shadow lost by the sun;
I am dark in the darkness, solitary, onward moving,
Until I silently enter a tiny circle of firelight.
There I sit with the Shadows that live in the gloom of the forest,
Eating, gesticulating. Soon we lie down in deep silence
But rolled in my blanket of darkness;
I hold a bright patch of the sky with those hills and earth's delicate antlers.





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