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voices. For the Poet had spoken of things which other men cannot see but which on hearing they know to be true; and this recognition makes them inexpressibly sad yet eager to hear more as if it were a cure for unacknowledged wounds. And the Poet knew of his power and whence it came. ‘Wherefore’, he said to himself when the heaviness of night lay on the forest outside his hut and the fireflies inside tangled their shining paths in the thatch overhead, ‘I hide myself from the world and formulate medicines for its pain. I am not a Prophet in the wilderness, for I herald no one. Also I foresee nothing. Yet am I a Seer, for I see everything as it is.’
    Since he was not a stupid man, either, he saw that part of the reason for the Headman’s visits had to do with a supply of gin, the last remnants of which the Poet still had laid by him from the day of his arrival, having known of no good reason why plain living and high thinking should be any further penalised. Thus grew up between them that agreeable companionship which may be distilled from grain and words. And each was much the better for it since under its benign influence the Headman could forget he revered this foreigner as a shaman while it would quite slip the Poet’s mind that he sometimes thought of this native as marvellously dignified.
    So tireless sun and patient moon swung each other about the sky in a literary device known as tachychronia, signifying the rapid passage of time. And dawn preceded dusk and vice versa until the day came when a hardly audible sound like a memory of thunder hung breathing about the forest’s distant rim. It rose and fell on the breeze so that at times it was not there at all but then took its place once again behind the jungle cries of insect, bird and beast. Some days later it had become almost constant, and when the Headman appeared, bowed beneath trusses of viridian gourds, the Poet having bade him rest and refreshed him as usual with verses and gin asked him what it might mean. ‘I fear’, he added, ‘that dreadful disasters, storms and earthquakes such as never before must be shaking the land about us. And yet the ground whereon we sit is curiously unmoved.’
    The Headman, too, had heard the sound but was equally uncertain as to its cause. His village had spoken of the roar of floodwaters since it bore some resemblance to that caused by the river in spate with the coming of the monsoon. Days later stillthe noise had grown more menacing, and amid its now constant growl were to be discerned irregular pantings such as wild beasts make when rending prey. This-time the Headman was more informative.
    ‘A messenger has arrived by boat. He comes from the King. The King in his wisdom, caring only for the greater well-being of his subjects, has contrived a brilliant plan to make us all rich. Maybe you as well’ – he gave a reassuring bow to the Poet. ‘For, although you are a foreigner and a wonderful teacher not like us, yet still you sojourn in the King’s land and may receive of his benison.’
    ‘But I am already far richer than I deserve.’ The Poet looked round in bewilderment at the familiar yet ever-changing beauty of his domain. ‘I need no other wealth. The King is, of course, too good,’ he added politely. ‘But what is his brilliant plan?’
    ‘He has sold the forest’, announced the Headman, ‘to strangers like yourself from far-off lands. They have bought all the trees and now they are cutting them down. Those are their remarkable machines which you can hear even as we speak. They say they can make a field this size’ – he pointed at the clearing – ‘in the time it takes us to cook rice and banban and of it make a sweet-sap pudding. Whereas it would take my people with their axes fourteen suns to clear this ground for our slender purple cassava.’ And with that the Headman left, his head dazed with Progress and the benefits it promised to shower on his hitherto moneyless folk.
    But the Poet was