The Red Monkey: Narrative Verse
by Cosmic Poet Simon Pole
Electra Movie Camera image by Joe Haput CC BY-SA
Red Monkey
Red the monkey was in the citrus grove,
Where thick bud the fruit, and peculiar throve,
These he greedy thrust with a grasping paw,
Through the wicked teeth of his hungry maw.
Came the village-folk when their crop was dry,
And the rain sealed up in the parchèd sky.
Leafy-lush they saw was the monkey’s stand,
And petitioned him: green their dying land!
Their boys tickles he underneath the chin,
And girls he surveys with his toothy grin,
Then the monkey chirped to the parents poor
What the price would be to loose heaven’s door.
“Leave me your offspring, put them in the trees,
There will they dangle, happy from their knees,
And like monkeys play, all the season through,
Until watered fields, in bales, harvest you.”
Gravely they confer, grim among the roots,
If it could be true, what the monkey hoots:
If consigned their kids, were with him a spell,
When the autumn came, barns they’d have to sell.
And they all agreed, though an ape might lie,
Without nursing rain, young and old would die,
So with heavy heart, and tears let to drop,
They the children left, and depart to crop.
At first, weak and wan, were the plants they hoed,
And their sun-cracked lips cursed this deal they sowed.
But with crisper nights, and the sun’s decline,
Up sprung a surfeit of rows fat and fine.
Restless laboured they all the night and day,
Sparing not a thought, but for hills of hay,
By their sickles cut, bundled tight in sheaves,
In their buildings packed, up unto the eaves.
Right the monkey was, long the promised rain
Had on them fallen, and in puddles lain.
Rich was the harvest, fortunes for them made,
This they considered, squatting in the shade.
Something in them stirred, what had they forgot?
With death-like quiet, slept the village lots.
Days of noise and play, some of them recalled,
But the buyer’s bell, recollection stalled.
Ginger-haired he was, red of freckle too,
And with green vine stitched, were his clothes and shoe.
He his fingers snapped, and his moustache twist,
Counting out the bills, with a supple wrist.
Beer he sold them too, spirits in their keg,
Cartloads full of wine, heady to the dregs.
Music they made fierce, raucous was the rout,
Thick their drunken tongues, as they drummed him out.
“Drink and eat your fill,” he in parting said,
“Bang both pot and pan, with them wake the dead.
But a time will come, sooner than you think,
When a yawning loss, penetrates the drink.”
On and on they danced, well into the night,
Wide bestowed the moon, its reflected light.
Dazzling were the beams, in their bleary eyes,
When the peace was pierced, by a chilling cry.
“Mothers hear my moan, fathers stop your feet,
Pour your liquor out, still the dancing beat.
Sudden do I think, what it is we miss:
Babies that we love, and are wont to kiss.”
All at once they rush, crowding out the gate,
With a gnawing fear that does not abate,
Though they breathless run, and unstinting stamp,
Down the winding path, to the monkey’s camp.
Silent was the site, without laugh or glee,
No more children hung, fooling in the trees.
Sullen sat instead, hateful in their stares,
A new crop of chimps, swarthy black of hair.
High the monkey hoots, like a demon horn,
And upon the folks, heaps his ribald scorn:
“Careless have you been, and your wealth in hock,
Cannot be redeemed, though I know it shocks.”
“So you fated are, long to childless be,
While these chimpanzees, parentless and free,
Will the district comb, stuffing twixt their teeth,
Any newborn sprog, captured on the heath.”
Battered, broken, beat, left they without hope,
And from rafter beams, hung the knotted rope,
There among the grain, bales so rich and high,
Missing not a man, the whole village dies.
From The Cook and the Cold collection.