In Sambisa
A light flickers from a long concealed match
Footsteps are heard
The flicker is doused
The match quickly concealed
The little one is groaning again
Her first mark of womanhood has come
In this madhouse
But this place is not a house
This mad forest
This must be the evil forest
The one of which Uwar
told
In her lilting voice, in the ancient story
Of seven heads on one shoulder
Dancing trees and chuckling tortoise
Of a beautiful girl,
An unheeded advice
And a ghost with borrowed limbs
Uwar must have told the story wrong
This evil forest
This persistently dark place
Has not the evil spirits
The kind of which Uwar
told
These evil spirits, for that they must be
Look like men
One head, two malevolent eyes
Two legs that aim for the ribs
Two hands that grope one minute
And smack before one can say Insha Allah
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