Companion of Life: Poems from Zimbabwe

All clocks on my wall

55 A silent travel At the brink of the forest I stand I can hear still The clatter of hooves Of horses, Whose rider brought me here The sun, Now distant Falls, I do not fear The coming of darkness As I stand here Not a voice stirs, All is peaceful and still The road was winding And hard I travelled And I just wish none of you take it Tired, I wish to find a piece of earth to rest All clocks on my wall I am a tree In the wind, broken at the knee Bleeding dirges like skies of storms Atoning in signatures of lightning all men’s wrong All men’s folly 56 I am the wind Broken in song, and blindly And voicelessly down the gutter To the drains where like a shutter My voice erupts into protest I am this star Impeded into the dark skin of the sky Like a scar, watching man mourn The blight they are born for I am the sun Trapped in the hint of haze With a mammoth task of an adjudicator To judge The divide of day and night Dazzling I go Time to part To have known you To have gathered you in my embracing eyes And delicate heart When the sun’s arrowheads at dawn Tenderly Cling to the skin of the waking morning Is part of this pain That runs like a thread Of thorny barbed wire through my nerves Now that the chariot’s wheels hurry near That the feet of the mourners ...