In Africa’s sun where the long grasses grow,
And whispers of wind through the tall acacias blow,
There wanders a creature both silent and proud,
With spots on his coat like a patchwork cloud.
His legs are like stilts and his neck stretches high,
He browses the leaves where the weaver birds fly.
With lashes like brushes and eyes full of peace,
He moves through the world with a natural ease.
No trumpet he sounds and no roar does he make,
Yet the earth seems to hush with each step that he takes.
He speaks with his silence, he teaches with grace,
And bears all the dignity kings would embrace.
While lions may thunder and hippos may boast,
And leopards may prowl like phantom or ghosts,
The giraffe needs no weapon, no claw and no bite,
He walks through the wilderness clothed in the light.
He kneels for the water, awkward and slow,
A gangly ballet of the ebb and the flow.
But once he is upright, so regal, so still,
He watches horizons over every hill.
He’s keeper of secrets the treetops have told,
And watcher of sunsets that turn the sky gold.
He’s there when the elephants trumpet at dawn,
And still when the stars prick the deep velvet lawn.
The zebras admire him, the jackals keep near,
Though none quite approach him, save birds, without fear.
For oxpeckers ride on his shoulder with pride,
And chatter the gossip from bushland to tide.
But danger still stalks him in silence and shade,
A hunter’s cruel weapon, a trap that was laid.
Yet even in peril he runs not in hate,
He gallops in beauty, he gallops in fate.
The children, they point with astonished delight,
When he lopes through the dusk like a flame in the night.
And wise men have studied his calm, thoughtful gaze,
And marvelled at nature’s most marvellous phase.
For he is a symbol of peace without end,
A sentinel watching where sky and earth blend.
No war has he started, no land does he claim,
Yet every green pasture remembers his name.
So raise up your voices and sing to the sky,
Of the gentle giraffe with his head held high.
Not fierce, not boastful, not savage nor sly,
But noble, and silent, and wondrously shy.
Let poets remember and painters adore,
Let children imagine him guarding their door.
For the world turns more kindly where he walks the path,
The silent, majestic, and marvellous giraffe.
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