‘My love, Noni, is yours and for our people and for the red hooded snake of hate.’

‘Aie, Aie, Aie,’ screams my love, my love Noni, speared to her mysterious giving womb by the lust of the white man, by his lust for having, by his trader’s lust.

And ‘Aie, Aie, Aie,’ wail the old women in their huts hearing my purposefulness in the wind and in the sign of the raped banana leaves. Voices of the wind, call my pain to the free world, the snake in the echoing dust, bite the heel of the heartless world for me!

‘Aie, Aie, my John, and what of the child I am having, it is being heavy on my heart, the child I am giving to you, my love, my man, and not to the hated white man from the store who tripped my frantic fleeing heels as I sped from him, and was being flung into the sightless dust at the hour of setting sun, the hour when all the world is being betrayed by the ageless night?’

‘Sleep, sleep, my girl, my Noni, the child is for the world, heavy with fate, and crossed with the mystery of mingling bloods, it is a child of vengeful shadows, the child of the gathering snake of my hate.’

‘Aie, Aie,’ screams my Noni, writhing deep and mystical in the shadows of the eaves of the hut.

‘Aie, Aie,’ scream the old women, hearing my purposefulness, the old women, auditors of life’s stream, their wombs dry for living, hearing the silent screams of living from their huts.

‘Sleep now, my Noni. I will return after many years. But now I have a man’s purpose. Do not stop me.’

Dark blue and green the ghosts in the moonlight, the ghosts subdivided by my hate. And dark red the snake in the purple dust under the banana tree. Within a myriad answers, the answer. Behind a million purposes, the purpose. Frrrrr, frrr, say the banana leaves, and my love sings: John and where will you go from me, who wait for you always with my womb filled with longing.

I go to the city now to the gun-metal-writhing-grey streets of the white man and I find my brothers and into their hands I will place the red snake of my hate and together we will seek out the white man’s lust and kill it, so that no longer will the banana trees bear alien fruit, and the soil of our raped country cry, and the dust of souls weep for rain.

‘Aie, Aie,’ scream the old women.

In the moon-menaced night a scream, the scream of anonymous murder.

My Noni creeps, double, into the hut and the purple-green shadows of the moon are empty and empty my heart save for its snake-purpose.

Ebony lightning hates the leaves. Jacaranda thunder kills the trees. Sweet globes of paw-paws receive indigo vengeance. Frrr, frr, say the banana leaves, ghosting the time-tired moon. I am going, I am saying to the banana leaves. Multitudes of perverted shudders rip the crisscrossing dreams of the thwarted forest.

I go on fated feet and the dust-echoes are swamp-dark in the loom of time. I go past the banana tree and red snakes of loving hatred are singing after me: Go man, go, for vengeance to the city. And the moon on the banana leaves is crimson, singing frrrr, frr, scream, cry and croon, oh red is my pain, crimson my twining pain, oh red and crimson are dripping the moon-echoing leaves of my hate.