Standing like a huge trunk masquerade
How many yards of cloth
Can go round your shapeless trunk
Not long I could embrace you
With my hands around you waist
How many more hands now needed
To feel your warmth
Yes the baobab stands
Against all impossibles
With sturdy leaves and shortish branches
Baobab coming to the edges of our homesteads,
Harbinger of desert pains
Go! from where you have come
You need no rains
Go where the rains will not fall on you
You need not our waterlog soil
Yet the baobab survives
And flourishes on our soil
Standing with her leprotic canopy.
Emmanuel O.O. Amali
EDITOR’S NOTE
Originally published in Nigeria Magazine on 01 Apr 1987, p. 88. This diplomatic transcription preserves the wording and lineation visible in the archived page.