Congo Rangers

Category: General | Date: Mar 16 2007 | By: admin

Dark steps they came,

Distracting the beetle green leaf light,

Hunger inspired hunt for game.

Shadows with guns,

Rapidly spoken in rasp whispers;

They come to maim, here

Amongst the trees.

 

They are heard.

Smelt first.

 

A head shoots up from cropping, paused step.

Eyes wide, ears flick,

She sniffs the jungle dense air.

As if from a trigger, the antelope pair is gone.

The tight spring taught by time, they will not linger.

As shade, they disappear through the forest.

 

And the men come, exercising a quiet they do not possess,

They have been heard.

Smelt first.

With guns caressed.

An alarm to all born flesh.

A fear of man,

Evolved,

Of man.

 

Except for one!

 

Alone, larger than they, stronger, blacker;

Vegetarian, mostly, feeding.

The silver of maturity marks his male.

Silverback mountain gorilla. Maybe 11 years, prime.

 

He is not afraid of them.

Has been watched by them, watched them,

Knows them, knows of them;

Has learnt to trust them, even.

Habituated; “one who is accustomed to humans”.

What folly, what pity.

 

When they shoot him, he does not die immediately,

But barks, wired with pale pain, spreading.

The next bullet kills the gorilla male.

He had not even risen.

His huge bulk rolls aside, to stone still.

 

The gun’s shot gusts a wind of cold air

Rushing through the latitude of warm forest.

Screech and scream, shrieks the air.

Crescendo of alarm, drawn to dead silence,

Big sound to tight quiet,

To too quiet,

To hush.

 

The ringing stillness doesn’t belong here, amongst the green loud of everything.

 

The men move towards the death, carefully.

A boot strikes the black flank; lank contact, just checking.

 

It is a curious thing he feels, one of the men.

Hollow.

Like space missing.

He looks up and sees the yellow eye of a large bird,

Regarding him.

His shivers are caught in the quiet.

 

He sees the pink loll of fresh tongue

As one pulls the great head round to face his killers.

Cursed meat, he won’t eat of the kill.

But the others, they will take their fill.

They are not from round here.

They come from the city and would laugh at his country caution.

 

For the butchery, he sits aside and watches

The blood of this anti-birth soak the dark soil,

Thatches of gore return to earth.

 

When the carving and cutting and splicing is done.

They throw the head in the latrine

 

It will make the headlines this death,

This single sad animal death.

More than the slaughter in Darfur, for a media minute.

Across the avenues of global news,

It will move like a slow burning fuse

This death, for a minute.