Kaidara (excerpt) - Amadou Hampâté Bâ

When the Great Forger of the skies reached his forge,
he plied his bellows till the forge came alight.
When it glowed, heat came to the earth
and was heavy on it, till everyone sweltered and suffocated.
Men and beasts sweated in its heat.
The servitor-clouds were coming and going,
cutting across the firmament, going to the pool of heaven,
drawing water there, and drinking their fill.
These are the clouds, pregnant with the waters they have drunk,
that then relieve themselves, and spit out stabbing the earth,
as though to purge every man of his every hidden sin.

The Forger of the skies now sets to work:
He hammers the mass on his anvil till it glows
And the sparks fly and come to earth as lightning flashes.
Hammadi could discern six various kinds
whose brightness flashed before the heavens rained down.
Most merely poured down fire.
He saw some forked like a kahi-tree,
its great branches descending right to the ground.
He noticed some flashes as it were fettered together
between two clouds, close together like two cattle-tracks,
separate but bunched together, in a clearing.
Hammadi saw others like little grains
dazzling wonderfully like a magic jewel
imbued with a mystic force, striking sparks
between earth and sky.

---

Amadou Hampâté Bâ (1901 - 1991) Mali
Translated by Daniel Whitman
Source: pancocojams
Strictly speaking this poem is anonymous, but the version shown here was "versified" by the Malian poet Amadou Hampâté Bâ so I have credited it to him