When I was in exile in Zimbabwe I brushed shoulders with the greatest of Zimbabwean poets in the streets of Harare... Whether it was Dambudzo Marachera disrupting Hebert Ushewukunzes opening of the annual international book fair at the Harare Art Gallery, or bumping into him chatting up expatriate women in the gardens of Harare hotels during sundowners. Dambudzo died too young, but then the beautiful ones never grow old. I would like to share with you Dambudzos very insightful and prescient poem Sharpevilles Blind Nights Ahead. I have seen lights Flashing from Afrikaner jackboots Signalling ceasefires Signalling from Pretoria - Lights of polished guns - in memory, searchlights Looting Sharpevilles gleaming Eye - Inside the hearts novel A tall thin candle shines - Reveals guant black faces Their eyes condolences Bayonetted in the face - I have seen Pretorias cunning glint Resoundingly echoed by Arctic Northern Lights - Consciences torch without batteries Frontline peepholes blinded by the relentless Artillery of Cape Town searchlights - Inside negritudes bantustans I grin and dine on diplomacy - And wield pen, paper, knife and fork With Apartheids herrenvolk - For the bird in these soiled hands And not for Azanias soaring eagle Hope has thrown his whole book Into my face - Yesterdays friends now judge & jury of my own liberation - The whole book into my face! Yesterdays horizons, wide & vast As Africas achievements, have Shrunk into a straightjacket around Sharpevilles shoulders - The whole book into my face! This wolfs proferred talks A nightmare in exiles solitary walks - My pockets burn with Judas coins, consigning The children of Soweto to burn yet again While I count the coin of this final solution - The whole frontline book into your face! From thick forest to barren scalp From awesome lake urine trickle From black giant to shrunken dwarf Thats the whole ceremony flung into your face! The chilli sauce flung into Azanias soaring Eagle! The hour among fetid lilies When drums echo distant treachery When mbira player pauses enigmatically When dumped babies and children raped - The ear among illusions gristle & bone When toxic dewdrops will the tongue to taste Nkomati declarations When finally the exile realises his total loneliness - The caress among the thorn-grit roses When brotherhood is betrayals seed When betrothed is the bearer of your need & death When promises like petals suddenly fade - This is the hour, the ear, the caress To explode solitude into breaking shrapnel The hour to say No! And like the Phoenix schooled on bitter ashes Erupt into the burning scorching flight of Azanias eagle, Red smarting eyes surveying the rats below Once again dares the burning flight to freedom! There is no valour in vanity The peacocks feathers Now adorn the conmans straw hat. Why the many sugared words Which speed brother & sister to the enemys jails? let roadsweepers Sweep this diplomatic litter into gutters That you and I will return into the night Finger on trigger, the Revolution on the Move! Postscript Theres no hurry in Africa, said a woman on the Norfolk/International Hotel - There is only time to enjoy! she added.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 12:28:28 +0000
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