Ndinoda munda wemugan’a, penga penga
Hoiyere ndopenga ramba kupenga
Unobuda magwere akasimba, penga penga
Hoiyere ndopenga, chiramba kupenga
Tsvimborume munaHwiru, penga penga
Hallelujah Chicken Run Band, “Ndopenga” (1974)
By Rukudzo Onai
1.
Famished forests smoke and howl
in the broken circuit of earth, water and fire
downstream footprints bloodied in black
by vulture talons that mine out of turn
I sweep burnt forests for the path least likely
there got to be a next-door earth for lovers
where rainbirds weave dreams in full color
strangers looking for it don’t stop for directions
to never circle back the way you came
is the only path there is in famine
I have walked back into the sun I came in
I have borrowed your eyes to see my shadow leave
I have accepted chaos to feel myself again
Mbira masters walked Guruuswa when green was gold
translating riversong to give names to all the animals
their red-earth heaven is today my seamless desert
I raise their greetings from another time, ghosts
mirrored on smoking silt, always never here, maybe
ancestor-forsaken feet that today trample memory
have not been to the next-door earth for lovers
where rainbirds weave dreams in full colour
I have walked back into the sun I came in
I have borrowed your eyes to see my shadow leave
I have accepted chaos to feel myself again
I have circled back the way I came
no longer wise to what undead scenes flood
the broken circuit of spirit, wind and fire
in the sacred distance a desert mermaid
enchants what last water was last heard to flow
where Mashayanhengeni shades Gute in balding blue
love drown me into the arms of a desert mermaid
2.
Something of laughter in the night
dizzy and distracted, burdens my song
nothing like the bullish-brew abandon
that swells the last throes of drumbeat
at the threshing floor. something of impossible
nostalgia, of ghosts floating dry yesterdays
and borrowed civilizations. by the rivers
of Rhodesia, I knead out of my griot-time gourd
a mbira montage of moods and seasons
I rinse out of my nyunga-mbira gourd
a clothesline that drips yesterday in color
The dark river sacred and unknowable
is the desert mermaid’s lair but I am
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
Feverish wind courses the gourd’s dry veins
indeterminate distance between
morning red and moonshine grey
the distance in my song conjures yesterday’s
rugged shards of crickets on waking greens
tender warbles spread across after-rain blue
drifting clouds of sea-blue charinga birds
embroidered in cornsilk-yellow overhead
weaving above me a choreography of shapes
lending to my songs their own impatient rasp
all in a distant yesterday’s color-letting clothesline
mbira masters walked Guruuswa but I run it
The dark river sacred and unknowable
is the desert mermaid’s lair but I am
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
Forever today is a sinister joke
demanding of me strange laughter
to echo shards of life already slipped out of hand
don’t accompany me to Chiwara
the grey tropics tangled with my umblical cord
halfway my bloodied soles will pick up yesterday
under the mukute tree that married sun and song
before green days were shaded by money trees
love drown me into the tail of a desert mermaid
The dark river sacred and unknowable
is the desert mermaid’s lair but I am
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
Don’t accompany me to Chiwara
the grey tropics tangled with my umblical cord
VaMuchoni was buried outside the village
the wandering-bachelor spirit had plagued him
would be too much for a small family to inherit
did I pick his wavelength, herding by Mungezi, maybe
the exes curve me halfway across the village
and endure my best poems at the speed of silence
I heard the banking hall was painted last year
The dark river sacred and unknowable
is the nappy-afro mermaid’s lair but I am
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
happy to bleed because pain is proof of life
Hands up if God wrote a kill switch into your dreams
to snap just when you feel home in dreamland
dreams were made to be streamed not downloaded
spools of words to bind the liar in secondhand lies
I can no longer be by seeing and speaking so I am
happy to fall hard just to see I had been on my feet
for your own truth to grate the truth in my own heart
but this left-sided pain, nappy-afro mermaid, is physical
3.
I grazed my thumbs on the broken mbira
colors in my head spilled into a blurry screenshot
the nappy-afro mermaid awakening bloody waters
the river zinged from the rain god’s flamethrower
the whirlwind picked my thoughts before they could
crawl into the safety of words and fallbacks
love drowned me along for an organic walkthrough
but a mermaid’s arms are nothing like oil on canvas
my heart feels only the love that I suffer
my heart suffers only the love that is impossible
The sun is set in place
in the sunflower’s solar dreams
dreams never fade out
when happiness can’t be found
If I said my part too soon
love never has the stage sense to tell
whether time is faster than life
or life longer than time
soon is always already too late
when love has taken over your life
after time has overtaken your love
The sun is set in place
in the sunflower’s solar dreams
dreams never fade out
when happiness can’t be found
If I said my part too late
I just couldn’t see past the one day
that stayed always ever one day
one day for me to tell what my life is
before the rain love is forgotten
sooner than a passenger’s umbrella
late is always ever too soon
between a thousand last meals
between tables hesitantly clothed
with the last shred of dignity
The sun is set in place
in the sunflower’s solar dreams
dreams never fade out
when happiness can’t be found
If I said my part between two mistakes
my truth will blush to prove its love
and my love bleed to prove its truth
the star-crossed can still count stars
and soak the moon that demystifies dreams
in the zinging rain, let’s lock our burning bloom
The sun is set in place
in the sunflower’s solar dreams
dreams never fade out
when happiness can’t be found.
I don’t want to capsize under my ex’s bridge
beauty is stretched to pixelation
when the pauper dreams of the princess
I sneeze to remember her coldness
I have been under the bus longer than a mechanic
I have craned over the hedge to curve my landlord
I could only say my part between two blindsides
nappy-afro mermaid, swim out of that blur
my eyes can survive your dimpled smile
before you muddy your back pose with backstroke
my possessive heartbeat will end the energy crisis
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