The snails dehydrate, stew in their upturned shells to be crushed by passers-by. The man-high grass has turned yellow and then brown. The cows and goats are back to eating plastic bags. The frogs, crickets, mosquitoes are heard no longer; the rainclouds have gone away. The time to die has come.
The message is supreme;
Born in the heart,
and lilting itself
from tongue to tongue,
throwing its scent
over wind and wave;
travelling on dots
or fingers
when blindness
or silence bar its way.
It hews itself into stone
or burns itself onto magnetic discs;
it is the message that lives
and I exist
solely to pass it on.