Dambudzo Marechera Poems

For something to do let's forever walk this
Circle they call marriage (forever presumes neither
Beginning nor end) The rigmarole of vows is over.
Remember god allows himself the freedom to be the
centre
Of a circle whose circumference is everywhere (What
Cynicism!) With caution & luck we too can be the image
Of him. Love like history is bunk. Hence let your
attractions range
Free - I have no such intentions with humans at least.
You in this world will dally to surfeit
While I with the dead whose tombs are my brothels
Will oil passion's stiff joints. Do not be alarmed:
As they say A LUTA CONTINUA even beyond the
serried graves.
...

From nightsky's black earth
Rare lilies, like stars,
Flower into life, yours and mine.
Orion, Andromeda, these startling sickles.
Of each our nights, recumbent beyond mere mortal
Rest, are not fixed but pliant to our motion
When courage lip to lip embraces despair.
Do not to the deep sorrow surrender
But ever twine upward to the silver light
Eyes a blast furnace terror to untruth.
Through windowpane I view the wide vistas
Of improbability become possible, hugging each to
Other in heartrending love: no more the one step
That's a giant stride for mankind, but you and I
In fiery leap burning bright become starfruits
Over stony ground.
...

the waters rushed down
upon the gnarled bush
writhed in profile

the waters unleashed their scything
flood powers
wild scattering of primeval beasts
rose into hoof-pounded
crescendo, as -
the moment the sky cried out in a thrombosis
of lightning -
the moment of a second the explosion
lit up white in a heave of stones
and bodies -
resounding through the arrested moment
of time
in a desperate dance of death -
two men
locked in strenuous struggle
of violence
two men now two killers
settling the difference of their separate
ideologies, but each now alone
bent on his prey
...

Her vision's scrubland
Of out-of-work heroes
Who yesterday a country won
And today poverty tasted

And some to the hills hurried their thirst
And others to arson and blasphemy
Waving down tourists and buses
Unleashing havoc no tongue can tell -
Her vision's Droughtstricken acres
Of lean harried squatters
And fat pompous armed overlords
Touching to torch the makeshift shelters
Heading to magistrate and village court
The most vulnerable and hungry of citizens -
Her vision's Drought Relief graintsrucks
Vanished into thin air between departure point
And expectant destination -
In despair she's found in beerhalls
And shebeens, by the roadside
And in brothels: selling the last
Bits and pieces of her soured vision.
...

In the song
Are waterfruits;
In the plush and flow
Firestars eternally fixed.

Guitar strings lash
My back, draw blood -
The out of control voice
Skids shrieking across

Tarmac audiences.
...

Like meteorites, through my long
Isolated heart-atmosphere, you
Burst incandescent over my platinum history.
My future in earthquake reeled; my present only on
Seismograph could point to the cataclysm - no
Evidence of you attached to my stone and flesh,
Only nightmarish passions which I can still hear
When you shake your head. Shake it vigorously.
Nuclear tests of underground love!
...

I'm against everything
Against war and those against
War. Against whatever diminishes
Th' individual's blind impulse.

Shake the peaches down from
The summer poem, Rake in ripe
Luminosity; dust; taste. Lunchtime
News - pass the Castor Oil, Alice.
...

Great Zimbabwe, Matopos: they to me return
You feverish with visions of mortality:
I dare not hold your fragility tightly
But through anger's gentle kiss remould you
With my intimacy to your former state.
Brief acquaintance, dredged by shared experience,
Is now a harbour for the biggest tankers
Or the human spirit: Mainz, Harare. Maputo,
Cologne, Lusaka: the loneliest breeze
Is part of the astounding cyclone.
Forget ever the pain that teases your eternal sight:
Finite impurities will never dim your tormented inscape!
...

Had this nightmare
Bashed out my brother's brains
Woke to find I owed rent

Had this dream
Fucking my sister
Woke to find final demands

Tried to sort out the sunlit night
Thieving pimping talk it outright
Got back bailiffs were breaking down the door

And I thought even a son-of-a-bitch's
Supposed to have FAMILY
Their scraps of excuses kicked me back
Into the night

Now there's nothing but not to think
Yes not-to-think is the only taboo
The Pandora's rucksack inside the anarchist's
Tiny mind
...