…and you clap your hands above your head
Hips moving to the sun-beat’s feverish rise,
Inching higher and higher it fills all with heat livid,
Dunes of Sahara, streams of Niger, down and above.
A man goes into the river crops – not for the heat,
Flock of kids on the bridge – for the hippo!
They dance and shout, children of sand and sun,
Barely clothed, waiting to evidence a mighty trick of nature.
Measured and groundly it emerges. The man jumps,
And children yell in joy, one for a thousand.
Muddy and disturbed mass in transfer,
Fragile in choices, it thrills spectators feeble.
Simple joys of blithe youth – a hippo, man-fret.
…and the sun climbs right above your head,
Freeing all of shade – making hippo sink to his eyes,
Children scatter, the man go off in direction vague,
Making all as it was before, before the man, before the children
…and the hippo perhaps, for even I, can’t see him now.