At The Volcano

ONE Wholly beautiful, this is a remote withdrawn unsaid place; knowing nothing, wisdom held unaided. The volcano, burst, blistered, blasted before time, rises above savannah, autonomous. Nothing of what I have left behind has followed me here: no bars, or clubs, or safari parks swarming with mutinous animals; there are no buildings here,no cables, no pylons, nothing. There is nothing,nothing; there are no roads even, nor walls, bridges, hospitals,barbers, butchers, pharmacies; museums are absent; and shops,and markets selling fruitand sentimental knick-knacks. TWO Even the ruinsaround this place have still to be built,lived in, fought for, destroyed by monsoon rains, by dead and dated wars,and rebelshiding from the recent defeatsof old conflictsthat never end; there are just trees; just podo treesrising like citadelsaround the titanic flanksof the volcano; trunksthirty feet round; their branchesforking low,twisting,archinginto artless beams,hewn lintels,giant joists; a stronghold,spontaneous, animate,built in a high lapsed land, soaringabove bordersthat have worn into wasted lines,pale snaking imprintswoven invisiblybetween every spur and stream, climbing the sides,between ridges and peaks,vents, conduits, lakes – the crater, cloistered, limitless: every inch of every borderremembered in old, disputed books in archives in Nairobi and Kampala; in the stories the tribespeopletell each otherevery breaking dayin villages far, far away. THREE Mostly though, there are no people here:no trippers; no travellers, tourists, not even residents; just me, and one bemused young driversmoking through a packof Marlboro lights. Especially, there are no houses,no homes or gardens; no streets or settlements. In this place -in this place here – no cars soundno buses blare their loud exhausted horns; there are no windowsto openfor music to escape from; conversation to drift from no drilling, grinding, crashing, crunching,no barking dogsor phones, no people talking, shouting, singing,nor even passing each other,to pass the daywith a nod, a “Hi,” a “Humm”. In this place herethere are no rooms filled with the ordinary thingsof lifeor of objects passed from one generation to the next. In this place hereit is the trees that talk,that chatter and discoursein sudden winds; it is the birds that speak, confer, negotiate,the buzzards, bustards, cuckoos, kites; and the waterfalls, slapping over a hundred meters of rock,the hot springs bubbling, and hyenas baying at a cornered buffalo. In this placeit is the sounds you cannot hearyou notice first and last:the stealthy leopard,the bushbucks, cobras, lizards. This is a placethat leaves no trace. FOUR I have climbed herequite alone,leaving the jeepwhere the level groundran out. At the end of a ragged treadof off-road tyresthe bush rolls, scrub to forest; long burnt grass - the colour of lions –reaches to the forest on the mountain’s sheer as tombstones sides; the slopes narrow to a lawless green, strip out light,break spaceinto an elaborate mazeonly animals can navigate,following the antique pathsmade by wild elephants. You hear them,travelling by night,scouring the salt caves,their tusks - like the claws of massive diggers -carving deep channelsinto the volcano’s heart. Jungledefends the cancelled land,morphs into thick shadows,repeating and repeatingall that it is; fugitive tracks -the tread of wary animals - blur and disappear,snaking off in the sombre light, the measured lunatic murmur of insectstwists in tail-winds. Colobus move. FIVE Python creepers curtain from forty-metre trees; camphor, redwood, juniper, rebuffthe shrinking sun. A hungry old insistent nightbegins to fall; and in the evening miststhe volcanoappears and disappears; floats,through the turning yearssince before the day was late; a templeover the world it made; a dreamland built in fire and ash in tephra, cinders, lava, a guarded shangri-lawhose gods have namesnow quite forgotten(if they were ever known at all). Here, the jehovahsare perfect, imperfect,perpetually lingering onheedless of permissionscraving not to know