The Love Cure

Try six months flat upon your back

Ripped with a rotten festering wound;

A cot, unyielding as a rack;

A blanket stiff with blood and black

With dirt; try the incessant sound

Of beating drums and jigging feet;

Try goat's milk in a dung-lined pot

And morsels of charred monkey-meat;

Try village smells; try flies; try heat

And manioc roots grown green with rot.

Then, when you totter to the sun,

You'll waste no sighs on hearts undone!