Into Africa Poem by Robert Rorabeck

When you don’t make a sound,
I love you,
And I want to abduct you and take you to Africa,
Realize the bloom, and become a new species-
Where the entire country is poorer than Alabama,
But I can look you in the eye the entire day,
And bathe you in the red dust made of our grandparents,
And imbibe you the way the crocodiles drink
The muddy river, the way they will do it forever-
We won’t wear shoes or underwear, and our farts
Join with the song births and green snakes draped in
The trees amidst the long brown seed pods-
Where I can take you into the bush, and we can cry
Over the mud cross we put over your father’s grave,
And let you fall down and beat the earth and water
The anonymous sanctuary hidden away from the machetes,
And the long joyful years you held together, until I
Cover your mouth and remind you that weeping so
Loudly will only draw the predators, as now we connect
And make love rolling in the purpose of traditional foreplay:
No watches to keep track of how long it takes to enter
You, and then for you to say my name, the way the
Limpid shells speak of the sea, the way your tears could
Be mistaken for a sudden shower prattling on the bundles
Of sticks on the roof of our small round hut-
The unhindered warmth of mammalian compressions,
And the comfort of the griot’s oratories back in the village
Forum where books are not aloud just tongues,
The feverish answers in the theatre of one man’s mouth,
And our children lined up in a tribe of laughing ochre
Where airplanes are the silver trips gods take on holidays,
Where heaven can be located in a bed along the river,
And church in the roofless chorus and the clouds vespers
Sung long before man followed the animals north and
Paled into the deeper troubles of his own invention. Being
Here in the large continent without amusement parks or directions,
I can keep your heart pressed to mine as shelter, and know
The rain falling on our roof like choral students tapping the
Xylophone, is from the same cloud that came yesterday,
And so many times before that.