Pelvis sandstone       beside symbols of question

stick-traced at sunset,       answered by the pause of fox.

Strata of chanting vertebra       west of the Cote d'Ivoire,

late beside the Niger       in a land of cliffs and chockstones

you have blown through       like the Saharan winds of harmattan,

dicing the ochre earth       to scab and craquelcure.

It's all inside them:       the Toloy who lived here,

gathering slow as scree       and naming the baobab trees,

avoiding the sun like fungi.       One of the locals, village hogon,

watches sidelong as you eye       the tortoise-carved stilts

of his son.       Stick men of culture, once traced, confine

the people, you tell him.       The hogon smiles.

Europa, he calls you.       Would hurl you from cliffs

for your arrogance, but a few       Malian francs dropped in bowl

convince him you are mad.       Like the rest of the elders,

he simply wishes you to       return to your land of black light

and wind-filled metal. But you cannot. Instead Europa must begin

the steaming off to culture ash--       less eye, more sounds:

a trituration echo of millet,       stairs of stone troughed to bowls

by the water of feet,       and the grave caves of the Bandiagara

air-trilled by sherd,       bone wood, and sacred fingerbell.

   First published in Conjunctions