Once one afternoon
as a child I gathered
from my father who used
to sit beneath a tree
a story. He said:
'Years before there lived
a king with horns who decided
from then on the blemish
would not be known.
A coward follows his ways;
so constantly he checked them
and wrapped a turban to hide them
but a servant found the secret out
and with this knowledge
outrage welled inside him.
They said he was mistaken
and if he didn't stay quiet,
he heard he would be killed.
Anxiety rose but he was barred
from passing on what he knew.
He understood his predicament:
food stuck in his throat
the knotted news kept him awake
he wandered from place to place
knowing to hide it from all
the people with hungry stomachs
and all this set his bed alight.
Then in the middle of the night
when sleep was missing he leapt
from his home and village
and headed for the dark, the forest,
the pools of the wild animals;
in the gloom the eagle and gazelle
fled away and he took up
the shield of remembrance
and compassion for the poor.
Aimlessly he wandered, then, when
the dawn glowed, he dug,
like a beast burrowing a den,
deep beneath a tree
and placed his chin and beard
upon the soil and whispered with
the hole alone passing on his knowledge
'that the king, Goojaa,
has the horns of a kudu'.
Now, don't interrupt me;
what you've gathered here
is a story once passed to me:
when the news of those horns
flew from his shoulders
everything became light
and from that place of burial
he dusted himself off and left
to travel on his way.
And later in that place
they said that when rain fell
horns grew out of the ground.
