Gedi

Here the trees have reached their own conclusion:

The child who played at hide-and-seek is gone.

Those bodies, after all, were an illusion;

The faces of the crowd though linger on

Sweet ghosts among the branches, blind and dumb.

So all the dead men in the House of Beads

Found an unlikely permanence in stone;

Each suggest his knowledge of our needs.

That once loud public person lies alone

Closer to his flesh, closer to the bone.

Locked in their desperation like the sea

As voiceless as their noises, who can tell

Where they now are, as dumb as they should be.

What dreams there were are lying where they fell

Like children's playthings where they said farewell.

Author's Note

Gedi is a lost city on the coast of East Africa, south of Malindi