Tribute to African Writers
For I wrote so long a letter to Mayombe and Anowa
That I will marry when I want
For the beautiful ones are not yet born
While we wait for the rain
In the coming of the dry season
Behind the anthills of Savannah
Milking the cows of Shambati
Gathering good bits of wood
And the fortunes of Wangarini
In that forests of a thousand demons
A sleep-walking land, for things had fallen apart
We faced the wrath of the ancestors
Bones and shadows
For it was not any easy walk to freedom
With Farai girls, Nehanda and the son of the soil
In that long journey of Popynongena
We met Matigari
And the tycoon from Peter Maritzburg
And the poor Christ of Bomba
We saw the devil dangling on the
Cross and his blooming petals of blood
We had the arrows of God
We wanted to kill the mangy dog
In the river between, was this a war of freedom?
Indaba my children
We sang the song of Lawino and Ocol
Walking down Second Avenue
Fighting to decolonize the minds of the people
We became the house of hunger
In the country of our own
The butterfly was burning
In the summer season
we never ate the grain of wheat
For we harvested thorns
Cry my beloved country
Country of my skull
For Nehanda still snores
Even after the struggle of Zimbabwe
MBIZO CHIRASHA is an internationally acclaimed performance poet. He worked as a guest poet in Namibia-Haiti presidential fund-raising project. He was also Poet-in-Residence for the United National Information Centre from 2001-2008, and for ISOLA/International Conference of Oral Literature this year. He is the founder of Writers' Caravan, a creative writing initiative in Zimbabwe.
