The man who saw Livingstone Poem by Charl-Pierre Naudé

The man who had seen Livingstone was now virtually blind.
When was it the Englishman trudged into Africa -
the 1850s, 1860s? He and his troupe, their mosquito nets
and their trunks, the great explorer dead
soon after …
(Lifetimes ago. "Difficult for his age
to be gauged" - a report in a daily, in the early sixties.)
So the old man, who as a young boy had seen Livingstone,
was revered among his people, and others too.
A national treasure, a roving museum piece.
They would push him between towns in a modified wheelbarrow,
ululating in front and behind in an endless serpentine row
along a narrow mud track cleaving through dense bush
from clearing to clearing, not without casualty.
For miles and miles and days on end, the old man bobbing
patiently in his iron cup, eyes rolled upward, legs folded in.
Or he would enter a town in a sidecar attached to a tandem
pedalled by two, thronged by his entourage blowing whistles
and pumping hooters while ecstatic villagers swept
the dust road for the approach, with palm leaves and straw brooms.
Like Livingstone himself being welcomed by the crowds
of London, slowly making his way towards Buckingham Palace.
And the curious there, from far and wide, to pay their respects.
To gawk in admiration at the only man alive (oblivious with age)
who'd seen The Discoverer with his own eyes one morning
in 1870 from behind a shrub, within earshot of the Great Water -
swapping copper and incense for directions.
What a strange sight, a translucent traveller:
made entirely of soul, a man without a body!
And they'd kiss his feet, and feel his spoon eyelids
after coughing up a fee at the doors of the community hall.
An historian came from Europe to make notes:
somewhere in the old fossil was buried
a first-hand memory, a living picture, of Livingstone.
The expert tilted the old head like a magic lantern
and peered into its eyes for the elusive image.
In the play of leaves coming through the window, yes there:
the adventurer, gesturing wildly, waving on the bearers.
A flash of shadow of the overhead fan, clear as day:
a bird sweeping past, the moment he asked about the Falls.
The old man was waning fast, a hundred and twenty years old.
All that was left of him was that image of the pioneer.
Isn't it a pioneer,
who becomes a hundred and twenty years old?
They took him out on a stretcher, one man at the back and one
in front, and gently put him down next to his wooden trunk.
Nothing final, just a breather for the porters …
And thus, he became Livingstone even Marco Polo,
an aristocrat in his sedan chair transported
into Infinity, an explorer
of purest water.

Translated by Charl-Pierre Naudé