Companion of Life: Poems from Zimbabwe

Father to child

30 Father to child Look now my child! The sun and how bright From the deepest slumber of a timeless night Clabbers up on trembling wings of a new day And you are there Embraced in the apocalypse Of a new yearning life, the ray that shines Hold your cry child Oh my child This is our land Veined with worried streams of error to no end Knit in the gossamer net of man’s ways And too, on these faces sometimes laughter flickers But tears mostly do streak unpunctuated It statements Testimony to unending agony Life, Like a tide may rise, May fall Yet to this life, To this earth, This is not all Child, Take now this, which I offer –my hand Remember! It was with a cry that you came Perhaps to mourn the death, Loaned you 31 Life? And child For only infractions this is home We are bound to the land that gives and takes The great cycles of birth and death That come and go Of successes and of failures Of wakefulness and slumber And before death claims its pound of flesh Remember child, When I am none, When I am gone Remember! Life is a ride not to give up on Rwanda 1999 Rwanda Where the night goes Mourners march slow Pace after pace And the giggling drum And the lyre’s broken anthem And deaths ravaging rhythm Pace with us up the red foothills Madness’ manacles manning our minds Iron manacles in our hearts In this mutilation, life is no art Grief’s thongs grip the heart ...