Andre F. Peltier
Trouble on the Escarpment
“To hate someone, you don’t have to speak his language” ¹

There’s a Beechcraft
above the tree line
signally trouble on
Tarzan’s escarpment.
The great white hunter
is come to take ivory,
gold, flesh, from the darkest
heart of the jungle.
Listen closely,
you can hear him howl as he swings:
“Ahhhh AHHHHHHH Ahhhhh!”
The silverbacks pound their chests
as they assemble
to defend their domain.
And the great white hunter
brings guns, greed, death
to rape the land,
to return to London, Philadelphia,
Brussels, New York with pockets full,
with darkest desires
fulfilled.

There’s a lion crouching
in the bush,
watching as they plan their heist,
watching as they sing their songs
of conquest and power.
Where was Tarzan
when the tanks rolled
through Ardennes?
Where was Tarzan
when those seven bastards
met in Berlin?
He was eating gelato
in some Roman trattoria.
As those ships carried
their human chattel to
West-Indian markets,
he smoked his Turkish tobacco
in the shadows on Giza.

The vines hold tight,
and the crocodiles stand guard
as they sun themselves
on Suam banks.
Where was William MacKinnon?
Counting his coins
in the lonely fog of London.
When the steamers rolled
through Lake Victoria,
when the steamers docked
in Mombasa,
MacKinnon in his pith helmet,
counted his coins.
Disraeli’s tears
for the textile workers,
the coal miners, the poor sailors,
shed all the way to the stately
halls of Lloyds,
drowned the very souls
he claimed to love.
Disraeli’s tears flooded the jungle
as Tarzan swam to safety
with alluring pre-code
Jane and her naked thighs.
Cheetah read of doom
carved into the trunks
of those towering trees.
Cheetah knew the Beechcraft
meant death,
but where was Tarzan?
Which way did he go?
Hiding in the canopy
as they marched through
The Imperial British East Africa Company,
breaking camp and caging leopards.
“The elephant graveyard
is just around the next bend,”
they claimed.
“It’s just up ahead:
all the ivory we can carry.”
Tarzan loved his elephant friends,
but who loved poor MacKinnon?
Whose tears for Disraeli
flooded those
escarpment streams?
Ahhhh AHHHHHHH ahhhhh!
How Tarzan loved
his elephant friends.

1 Eco, Umberto. The Prague Cemetery. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. P 203.