Turkey vultures are still roosting there beneath the broken dome
And the shaman shuffles once again across the dusty ground
Arranging rows of old tin cans, each one representative
Of a former state and into each of which he starts to drop
With jerky deliberation, from his shrivelled, filthy mouth
Sucked m&ms, lilac and pink, guided by the ritual,
Slyly slugging dark brown hooch with every freshly filled mouthful
From a dirty jam jar that he keeps behind the altar stone,
Before which now the children, pimped in tattered fancy dress,
Move round and round in a lacklustre dance, their sullen chanting
Quite imperceptible above the rustling of the vultures
Who yawn, primping their feathers. The shaman starts to ululate
And hops from foot to foot and shakes a broken old broom handle
Wrapped around in silver tinsel and scratched with simple symbols,
The meaning of which even he’s forgotten.
The Kind Anthropologist is jolted from her daydreams
By her assistant’s sudden snore, so elbows him to wake him
As the whole performance has been staged entirely just for them
Plus the benefit of Science so she hisses in his ear:
“We’re almost at the part when the children get to kill the duck!”
She smiles at the filthy brats now lining up beneath the shrine,
An old, ruined edifice of rubble, straw and plastic bags.
And even though, in broken badlands way beyond the beltway
In pockets of tribal settlements pocked across the prairie
They whore after their different gods, she still feigns fascination
For these strange old traditions, and despite the screaming boredom
On the faces of the children now handed cutthroat razors,
She blinks politely when she takes the duck’s still warm, downy head
From the gnarled, dirty fingers of the gap toothed, gurning shaman
As furtively she starts chewing on khat.