MADAGASCAR

Like Iceland, New Zealand, and the isles

of the South Atlantic, Madagascar

for most of its ninety million years or so

had been untouched by homo sapiens –

until we carved out logs, invented paddles,

outriggers, sails, and learned to read sun and winds.

Almost as soon as the first sailors

had come ashore the forests were slashed

and set alight, the flightless Elephant Bird

and the Giant Lemur were extinguished.

***

The damp air of New Year’s morning is heavy

with the spent gunpowder of last night’s fireworks,

and the cloying smoke of wood-burning stoves,

so we are going to the Zoo to see

the lemurs in their new enclosure,

where we hominids may walk amongst them

as if through the dense forests of their island.

The Zoo conserves five of the hundred species

of lemur, the world’s oldest primate,

and peculiar to Madagascar.

Larger than cats, surer than squirrels

two Red Ruffed Lemurs have leapt to the top

of the tallest tree in the enclosure –

and are calling loudly to each other,

aggressively it seems to us viewers below.

Perhaps some ancient memory impelled them

to the canopy’s highest point so that they

might see their green and pristine land, but instead

found only scorched plains of felled baobobs

and the red earth haemorrhaging into the sea

under a poisoned sky.