Читать книгу Indaba, My Children: African Tribal History, Legends, Customs And Religious Beliefs - Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa - Страница 13

BEHOLD THE FIRST IS BORN!

After her capture

The Tree of Life held the Goddess fast

Never to let her escape again;

And it came about one day

That movements occurred within her,

Movements which increased with the passage of time,

Much to her fear and distress.

At long last, after a thousand years,

The Goddess felt a sudden tearing pain

That prompted her to cry out suddenly

And writhe in anguish in her mineral husband’s tentacles.

The first cruel pains were followed by others—

A third and fourth and the glittering voice of the Goddess

Rang loudly across the plains

To rebound against the stunned distant mountains.

The foolish Tree of Life not understanding,

Thought his bride was trying another escape,

So he held her more tightly in his manifold arms,

Greatly increasing her pain.

As time went on the intensity of her suffering

Increased twofold, and after fifty agonising years

Turned so utterly unbearable that she freed herself

From the Tree of Life’s endearing embrace,

And wriggled and rolled on the barren earth

In efforts to ease her inexplicable agony.

Such was her suff’ring, and desp’rate her efforts,

That with self-hypnosis she counted the stars.

E’en today many Tribes have the saying:

‘To count the very stars in pain.’

The first father, the Tree of Life, kept watch,

With typical helplessness

As his mate writhed and wailed through her birth pains.

But at long, long last the Great Goddess

Was relieved from her hideous pain,

And the first mighty nation of flesh and blood,

A countless number of human beings, was born.

And in their multitudes they spread

To populate the barren Ka-Lahari.

Meanwhile, however, the strangest change came over the Tree of Life;

Green buds burst from its writhing limbs

And clouds of seeds emerged and fell upon the rocky plains.

Wherever they struck the ground they shot out roots

Into the stubborn rock and barren sand,

Breaking through to reach some moisture

And soon all manner of plants grew forth—

A creeping carpet of lush living green.

Soon mighty forests covered the earth,

Contending with the mountains themselves.

Howling winds and sheets of rain

And roots of forest trees

Worked hand in hand to mould the craggy mountains

Into undulating plains.

Soon after all this effort the Tree of Life

Bore living, snarling, howling animal fruit.

From its widespread branches they fell with a thud

On the grassy ground below,

And scampered off into the forests

In their countless millions.

From great cracks in the trunk of the tree

Birds of all kinds came flying and waddling forth,

Filling the air with all their love calls;

Ostriches and ibises,

Eagles, hawks and flamingoes,

The kinds we know and those we’ve never seen,

Like the two-headed talking Kaa-U-La birds.

These we know from legend alone

And I’ll relate about them anon.

The earth which had hitherto been lifeless and dead,

Began to live, and sounds of all kinds

Resounded from the forests and valleys

As beast fought beast—

Beast called beast—

And birds sang their happiness loudly

Towards the smiling sun.

Many, many kinds of beasts

That the Tree of Life brought forth

Since vanished for ever from the face of the earth,

Because Efa the Spirit of Total Extinction

Has long since consumed them all—

And the kinds of animals we see today,

However many they are,

Are but the pitiful scraps that survived.

(Legends tell of three kinds of lion

Of which only one survived)

From the roots of the Tree of Life

Came reptiles of all kinds and shapes,

And cloud after cloud of all sorts of insects

Hummed upwards in continuous streams.

The Song of Life had begun on earth—

The Song which is still being sung,

But which one day may trail off into oblivion—

Leaving at most the faintest echo.

History’s sun had risen, and still shines today,

But it will no doubt set one day – fore’er!