if they followed him humbly
They need dwell in shelters and caves no more.
They must render the world safe for mankind
By exterminating all dangerous beasts;
And till the land no longer, nor harvest,
While metal slaves could serve their human masters.
He promised them all these
And a life of luxury and ease,
Which the gullible First People believed
And they blindly followed the advice they received.
Two generations later and now Za-Ha-Rrellel,
Who had meantime discovered the Immortal Secret,
Was ruling supreme at the head of an empire—
The most fantastic the world has ever seen.
This was the empire which legends tell—
The Empire of Amarire, or Murire—
In which men lived in shining golden huts
With a life and a conscience of their own.
They could move from place to place
In accordance with their occupants’ wish;
While metal Tokoloshes served in every way
From tilling the land to storing grain.
There was no need for lighting a fire
When all one had to do was fill the pot
With whatever one wished to eat,
And then command the pot to boil.
No longer was it necess’ry to walk long distances,
When all they had to do
Was stand outside their huts
And wish themselves to wherever they wanted to go.
No bother to use one’s hands to lift
A drinking pot to one’s lips,
When all one did was to command the pot
To pour its contents down one’s throat.
But as time went on a decay descended
Upon these very lazy men
And they began to think that the simplest things
Like chewing food was far too strenuous indeed!
The High Chief Za-Ha-Rrellel then gave them powers
To wish their food right into their stomachs—
No straining the jaws with mastication
Or bruising the gullet with swallowing too hard!
The result of all this was that men lost the use
Of their arms and their legs and their gullets and jaws,
And on top of all this both women and men
Felt that begetting was too much of a strain!
Thus all men and all women began to lose
Their powers of reproduction;
Sterile they all turned, except the Singer
The beautiful Amarava – about whom, anon.
There was little more that the wicked tyrant
Could do to exploit his powers—
So he turned to knowledge and Forbidden Things
Which the Great Spirit asked us never to seek.
First he passed to his subjects the secret
Of Immortality and Eternal Youth,
To save his Empire – now completely sterile
Save Amarava who remained fertile.
He secondly sent out his metal beasts
To capture wild beasts and then crush them to pulp,
And from this pulp he created new creatures
Resembling the human being.
These queer creatures he earmarked as slaves;
Entertainers and workers in his expanding empire—
These creatures, produced like kaffircorn cakes,
Were Bjaauni, the Lowest of the Low.
Legends tell us that these Bjaauni
Looked something like giant gorillas;
Completely hairless and of dead flesh and blood—
They constantly had a putrid odour.
They were greenish-darkbrown in colour
Like rotten animal flesh,
And also unlike their red-skinned masters,
Could reproduce their kind.
Za-Ha-Rrellel’s mis’rable products,
Unlike the Great Mother’s creations,
Had no power of speech
And could not think for themselves.
They dumbly and blindly obeyed their masters
However mad the instruction;
If asked to drink a river dry
They would drink till they burst and died.
While these Amarire were indulging in all this fun
The Tree of Life said to the First Goddess Ma;
‘What kind of beings did we bring forth?
Look, they’re depriving all Life of its purpose!
They live selfish and useless lives
And no longer beget their kind;
We must now destroy our first effort
And
