KWERI:

Soft clicking tongue from the lips of a thousand dunes,

Calling spirits, ancestors & rain in your chanting tunes,

Telling me of the Gods who live beyond my wary eye,

Showing me that when I am dead, I´ll never really die.

Kweri, you were my golden black-river Bushman friend,

Of my childhood, in the world´s far away & distant end,

In Kalahari where you talk to birds & the beasts in herds,

Your code-lost-lingo, on red-dust-clad breeze softly heard.

You taught me herbs & how to track beast´s print & spoor,

How to feel rain clouds & life beneath the dry desert floor,

Showing me secrets of skin drum, of red dusk & rosy dawn,

Of how to interpret the night & how to embrace new morn.

Your people, nomad scatterings & scatterlings of ancient plain,

Land you´ve walked for eons, not permitted to rightfully claim,

Of bow & arrow, clicking tongue, of golden soft & signing hand,

In my dying, Kweri, I hear your soft sighing in the shifting sand.