The Season of the Rains by Simon Mpondo

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The season of the rains

Signs its name in a thousand fashions

Those who want to read omens there

Will find their signs

In the flowering beard of the maize

And in the black or red rings of millipedes

Does the swallow’s departure for the Margui-Wandala

Announce many storms and floods along the Wouri?

Has the spider woven its web

Stored up insects and light and the sun’s warmth

To vanquish a cold season of a thousand days?

Does the plucked chicken speak of hard or easy times?

What says the black millipede?

What says the red millipede?

They say what the omens say

Yes or no or even perhaps

These are the signs

But they tell mainly what happened in the dry season

And not what the rains will bring forth

Plenty of labour in the dry days

Translates itself as maize in the wet

And in food for millipede’s colour

And the largeness of its rings

Which the sorcerer measures in his secret hut

Owe nothing to the season

Those colours will always vary

Some rings will always be large

And some narrow

Let each person make of it what he will

The signs of the rainy season

Say exactly what everyone wants to hear

Surely there will be plenty of water

Plenty of swamps and mud

That’s the message we read in the signs

Of the season of rains.