{"id":394,"date":"2016-06-16T17:10:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T17:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrmushava.wordpress.com\/2016\/06\/16\/roland-mhasvis-environmental-sequence\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T14:41:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T14:41:52","slug":"roland-mhasvis-environmental-sequence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=394","title":{"rendered":"Roland Mhasvi\u2019s Environmental Sequence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
\"http:\/\/www.herald.co.zw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/KOFI-ANNAN.jpg\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan<\/span><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
Roland Mhasvi\u2019s environmentally themed poetry anthology, \u201cTime of the Rupture,\u201d is an impassioned case for the preservation of the planet.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Mhasvi advocates for the protection of biodiversity from the scourge of extractive capitalism with an urgency approaching the apocalyptic.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The poet\u2019s cause is especially pertinent cause as factory-made carcinogens and poisonous chemicals are endangering mankind and depleting the environment.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Issue-based guilds have emerged with Zimbabwe\u2019s political seasons, but environmental writing still has relatively fewer takers.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Mhasvi is up to task with this elegantly packaged offering where all life is championed as vital for the sustainability of the planet.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The majority of poems in the 32-piece collection revolve around the counterpoint of humanity and the environment with vast expanse of imagery, occasional rhyme and musical cadence.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The anthology provokes touches of nostalgia for the natural beauty currently jeopardised by the commercially motivated ills.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Poetic homage to nature has been a sustained cause in world literature, from the Romantic Revival to African thoroughbreds like Niyi Osundare.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Only the sunny optimism of former dispensations has no claim on exponents writing today as the sustainability of life on the planet has become the foremost question of the day.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
In 2015, \u201cScience Advances\u201d reported that climate change, chiefly driven by pollution and deforestation, had erased more than 400 vertebrate species off the planet since 1900.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The human race is prominently featured among the walking dead if the debilitating patterns are not significantly reversed.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Mhasvi\u2019s anthology, written of the threshold of the millennium, demonstrates a rare command of the future.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
While the creative arrows of his generation shoot backward, Mhasvi is decidedly forward-looking.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
In 1999, he could process the implications of mankind\u2019s unbridled greed and picture the earth running down to the final catastrophe.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Mhasvi\u2019s inordinate esoterica sometimes leave the reader out of the loop and there are instances where wordiness could have been trimmed but the urgency of the whole is never lost.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Mhasvi spells out his mission from the outset with a citation of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan\u2019s 1999 Convention on Biological Diversity address:\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cWe cannot continue to destroy wetlands, forests, marine and coastal habitats with impunity. The destruction caused by human kind will now in turn threaten to destroy future generations.”<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u201cChildren of God,\u201d an indictment on man\u2019s inhumanity to nature, is a poetic rendering of Annan\u2019s warning.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Mankind is indicted for revolving the world around capital at the peril of nature, disfiguring it with extractive machinery and taking no thought of tomorrow.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The despairing persona cannot process the escalating menace as mankind feeds nature acid rain and poison gas in response to her care and puts the planet on the line with nuclear brinkmanship.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The capitalist establishment is charged for crushing the world under \u201chot industrial wheels.”<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0And yet howsoever money accumulates it cannot restore the fulfilment of being at one with the environment.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cYour Yesterdays glisten in the graveyards of your wanton kills\/ As your Tomorrows flame\/ In the smoky foundries of your greed!\u201d the poet warns.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
In \u201cThe Cranium Dunce\u201d puts down the destruction of the planet to lack of consciousness where to know less is to preside over the depletion of the joys and comforts of nature.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The state of the mind is equated with man\u2019s stewardship over nature. To know more is pictured as nature in its cheerful vitality, coursing a current of life across the planet.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cBut to know less were to trickle round to inland lakes, where the shore stood gaunt and red\/ Against the setting sun – \/ To shrink to swamps and braided ponds\/ Our sinking stream\/ Where shallow pools like broken mirrors, \/ Died along the halting course.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
These poems are backed by an empirical case and belong to a wafer-thin category of African literature which more artists need to sign to.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Where environmentally themed literature seemed to be a remote abstract, detached from the immediate concerns of the day, it has become the crying need of the African canon.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
In the past, being captivated by nature used to be regarded as a preserve of foreign travel diaries drawn more to the natural dainties of Africa than to the continent\u2019s people.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Now, a line cannot be defined between the two as extractive and industrial ravages are taking a toll on the continent\u2019s rural communities.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cNew African\u201d observes that the debilitating trail of climate change is most painfully felt by Africa due to stress factors such as the continent\u2019s low adaptive capacity, high dependence on rain-fed agriculture, disease prevalence and low levels of development.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cShade of Grey\u201d is one of the more accomplished pieces for the clarity of the imagery and the potency of the indictment.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The poem is homage to the worker, in the pro-poor tradition of Leonard Dembo\u2019s \u201cChinyemu” and Leonard Zhakata’s “Mugove,” is fit to a ready segment.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0Mhasvi recalls the dread of old, , witches before whose dark arts doors would unbolt and betray the victim to exploitation and death, equating it to labouring their lifeblood out to sustain a system of profit over people.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cAnd soon the victim ridden through the night, \/ Must feel the aches and pains in every joint – \/ Indeed he must feel his slowly mortal frame\/ So shrivel round his spectral bones\/ As down the slopes of life he sleeps,\u201d he recalls.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
But this is not even the final catastrophe. A new witchcraft has been institutionalised to be executed by day rather than by night such that the poor have no recourse:\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cBut now the nights of dread command\/ Do pall indeed to shades of grey…\/ Now see where the witches return\/ In the broad light of day! \/ In three-piece suits they ride on wheels\/ Of the black chariots of our black despair.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cA Hymn to the Greatest God\u201d is a lyrical labour of love for Zimbabwe, the shining epitome of peace, love and unity.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cAnd now to all the troubled World\/ The gift of Peace and Love we bring! When \u2018all mankind should live as one\u2019\/ Then Love, the greatest good, shall spring\/ From Hearts whose Care our voices sing.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The poem gives a nod to a new day where the fettering of man for \u201cgolden gains\u201d has been abolished by the liberation struggle and it is time again: \u201cWe cultivate our Land and Mind: In Factory, Field and Family,\/ Our Day with strongest Love we bind!\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The anthology has a sustained claim to the cultural space with issues as pertinent as the as the craft is durable.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
More artists need to deliberate climate change and work around possible solutions in their work as the sustainability of the earth and human survival remain the foremost questions of our day.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Mhasvi is also the author of the award-winning anthology and critically acclaimed \u201cThe Flowers of Yesterday.\u201d He is a former teacher who is currently into educational administration.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan Roland Mhasvi\u2019s environmentally themed poetry anthology, \u201cTime of the Rupture,\u201d is an impassioned case for the preservation of the planet. Mhasvi advocates for the protection of biodiversity from the scourge of extractive capitalism with an urgency approaching the apocalyptic. The poet\u2019s cause is especially pertinent cause as factory-made carcinogens and poisonous chemicals are endangering mankind and depleting the environment. Issue-based guilds have emerged with Zimbabwe\u2019s political seasons, but environmental writing still has relatively fewer takers. Mhasvi is up to task with this elegantly packaged offering where all life is championed as vital for the sustainability of the planet. The majority of poems in the 32-piece collection revolve around the counterpoint of humanity and the environment with vast expanse of imagery, occasional rhyme and musical cadence. The anthology provokes touches of nostalgia for the natural beauty currently jeopardised by the commercially motivated ills. Poetic homage to nature has been a sustained cause in world literature, from the Romantic Revival to African thoroughbreds like Niyi Osundare. Only the sunny optimism of former dispensations has no claim on exponents writing today as the sustainability of life on the planet has become the foremost question of the day. In 2015, \u201cScience Advances\u201d reported that climate change, chiefly driven by pollution and deforestation, had erased more than 400 vertebrate species off the planet since 1900. The human race is prominently featured among the walking dead if the debilitating patterns are not significantly reversed.\u00a0 Mhasvi\u2019s anthology, written of the threshold of the millennium, demonstrates a rare command of the future. While the creative arrows of his generation shoot backward, Mhasvi is decidedly forward-looking. In 1999, he could process the implications of mankind\u2019s unbridled greed and picture the earth running down to the final catastrophe.\u00a0 Mhasvi\u2019s inordinate esoterica sometimes leave the reader out of the loop and there are instances where wordiness could have been trimmed but the urgency of the whole is never lost. Mhasvi spells out his mission from the outset with a citation of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan\u2019s 1999 Convention on Biological Diversity address:\u00a0 \u201cWe cannot continue to destroy wetlands, forests, marine and coastal habitats with impunity. The destruction caused by human kind will now in turn threaten to destroy future generations.” \u00a0\u201cChildren of God,\u201d an indictment on man\u2019s inhumanity to nature, is a poetic rendering of Annan\u2019s warning. Mankind is indicted for revolving the world around capital at the peril of nature, disfiguring it with extractive machinery and taking no thought of tomorrow. The despairing persona cannot process the escalating menace as mankind feeds nature acid rain and poison gas in response to her care and puts the planet on the line with nuclear brinkmanship. The capitalist establishment is charged for crushing the world under \u201chot industrial wheels.” \u00a0And yet howsoever money accumulates it cannot restore the fulfilment of being at one with the environment. \u201cYour Yesterdays glisten in the graveyards of your wanton kills\/ As your Tomorrows flame\/ In the smoky foundries of your greed!\u201d the poet warns. In \u201cThe Cranium Dunce\u201d puts down the destruction of the planet to lack of consciousness where to know less is to preside over the depletion of the joys and comforts of nature. The state of the mind is equated with man\u2019s stewardship over nature. To know more is pictured as nature in its cheerful vitality, coursing a current of life across the planet. \u201cBut to know less were to trickle round to inland lakes, where the shore stood gaunt and red\/ Against the setting sun – \/ To shrink to swamps and braided ponds\/ Our sinking stream\/ Where shallow pools like broken mirrors, \/ Died along the halting course.\u201d These poems are backed by an empirical case and belong to a wafer-thin category of African literature which more artists need to sign to. Where environmentally themed literature seemed to be a remote abstract, detached from the immediate concerns of the day, it has become the crying need of the African canon.\u00a0 In the past, being captivated by nature used to be regarded as a preserve of foreign travel diaries drawn more to the natural dainties of Africa than to the continent\u2019s people. Now, a line cannot be defined between the two as extractive and industrial ravages are taking a toll on the continent\u2019s rural communities. \u201cNew African\u201d observes that the debilitating trail of climate change is most painfully felt by Africa due to stress factors such as the continent\u2019s low adaptive capacity, high dependence on rain-fed agriculture, disease prevalence and low levels of development. \u201cShade of Grey\u201d is one of the more accomplished pieces for the clarity of the imagery and the potency of the indictment.\u00a0 The poem is homage to the worker, in the pro-poor tradition of Leonard Dembo\u2019s \u201cChinyemu” and Leonard Zhakata’s “Mugove,” is fit to a ready segment.\u00a0 \u00a0Mhasvi recalls the dread of old, , witches before whose dark arts doors would unbolt and betray the victim to exploitation and death, equating it to labouring their lifeblood out to sustain a system of profit over people. \u201cAnd soon the victim ridden through the night, \/ Must feel the aches and pains in every joint – \/ Indeed he must feel his slowly mortal frame\/ So shrivel round his spectral bones\/ As down the slopes of life he sleeps,\u201d he recalls.\u00a0 But this is not even the final catastrophe. A new witchcraft has been institutionalised to be executed by day rather than by night such that the poor have no recourse:\u00a0 \u201cBut now the nights of dread command\/ Do pall indeed to shades of grey…\/ Now see where the witches return\/ In the broad light of day! \/ In three-piece suits they ride on wheels\/ Of the black chariots of our black despair.\u201d \u201cA Hymn to the Greatest God\u201d is a lyrical labour of love for Zimbabwe, the shining epitome of peace, love and unity. \u201cAnd now to all the troubled World\/ The gift of Peace and Love we bring! When \u2018all mankind<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-environment"],"yoast_head":"\nRoland Mhasvi\u2019s Environmental Sequence | Blockspace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=394\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Roland Mhasvi\u2019s Environmental Sequence | Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan Roland Mhasvi\u2019s environmentally themed poetry anthology, \u201cTime of the Rupture,\u201d is an impassioned case for the preservation of the planet. Mhasvi advocates for the protection of biodiversity from the scourge of extractive capitalism with an urgency approaching the apocalyptic. The poet\u2019s cause is especially pertinent cause as factory-made carcinogens and poisonous chemicals are endangering mankind and depleting the environment. Issue-based guilds have emerged with Zimbabwe\u2019s political seasons, but environmental writing still has relatively fewer takers. Mhasvi is up to task with this elegantly packaged offering where all life is championed as vital for the sustainability of the planet. The majority of poems in the 32-piece collection revolve around the counterpoint of humanity and the environment with vast expanse of imagery, occasional rhyme and musical cadence. The anthology provokes touches of nostalgia for the natural beauty currently jeopardised by the commercially motivated ills. Poetic homage to nature has been a sustained cause in world literature, from the Romantic Revival to African thoroughbreds like Niyi Osundare. Only the sunny optimism of former dispensations has no claim on exponents writing today as the sustainability of life on the planet has become the foremost question of the day. In 2015, \u201cScience Advances\u201d reported that climate change, chiefly driven by pollution and deforestation, had erased more than 400 vertebrate species off the planet since 1900. The human race is prominently featured among the walking dead if the debilitating patterns are not significantly reversed.\u00a0 Mhasvi\u2019s anthology, written of the threshold of the millennium, demonstrates a rare command of the future. While the creative arrows of his generation shoot backward, Mhasvi is decidedly forward-looking. In 1999, he could process the implications of mankind\u2019s unbridled greed and picture the earth running down to the final catastrophe.\u00a0 Mhasvi\u2019s inordinate esoterica sometimes leave the reader out of the loop and there are instances where wordiness could have been trimmed but the urgency of the whole is never lost. Mhasvi spells out his mission from the outset with a citation of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan\u2019s 1999 Convention on Biological Diversity address:\u00a0 \u201cWe cannot continue to destroy wetlands, forests, marine and coastal habitats with impunity. The destruction caused by human kind will now in turn threaten to destroy future generations.” \u00a0\u201cChildren of God,\u201d an indictment on man\u2019s inhumanity to nature, is a poetic rendering of Annan\u2019s warning. Mankind is indicted for revolving the world around capital at the peril of nature, disfiguring it with extractive machinery and taking no thought of tomorrow. The despairing persona cannot process the escalating menace as mankind feeds nature acid rain and poison gas in response to her care and puts the planet on the line with nuclear brinkmanship. The capitalist establishment is charged for crushing the world under \u201chot industrial wheels.” \u00a0And yet howsoever money accumulates it cannot restore the fulfilment of being at one with the environment. \u201cYour Yesterdays glisten in the graveyards of your wanton kills\/ As your Tomorrows flame\/ In the smoky foundries of your greed!\u201d the poet warns. In \u201cThe Cranium Dunce\u201d puts down the destruction of the planet to lack of consciousness where to know less is to preside over the depletion of the joys and comforts of nature. The state of the mind is equated with man\u2019s stewardship over nature. To know more is pictured as nature in its cheerful vitality, coursing a current of life across the planet. \u201cBut to know less were to trickle round to inland lakes, where the shore stood gaunt and red\/ Against the setting sun – \/ To shrink to swamps and braided ponds\/ Our sinking stream\/ Where shallow pools like broken mirrors, \/ Died along the halting course.\u201d These poems are backed by an empirical case and belong to a wafer-thin category of African literature which more artists need to sign to. Where environmentally themed literature seemed to be a remote abstract, detached from the immediate concerns of the day, it has become the crying need of the African canon.\u00a0 In the past, being captivated by nature used to be regarded as a preserve of foreign travel diaries drawn more to the natural dainties of Africa than to the continent\u2019s people. Now, a line cannot be defined between the two as extractive and industrial ravages are taking a toll on the continent\u2019s rural communities. \u201cNew African\u201d observes that the debilitating trail of climate change is most painfully felt by Africa due to stress factors such as the continent\u2019s low adaptive capacity, high dependence on rain-fed agriculture, disease prevalence and low levels of development. \u201cShade of Grey\u201d is one of the more accomplished pieces for the clarity of the imagery and the potency of the indictment.\u00a0 The poem is homage to the worker, in the pro-poor tradition of Leonard Dembo\u2019s \u201cChinyemu” and Leonard Zhakata’s “Mugove,” is fit to a ready segment.\u00a0 \u00a0Mhasvi recalls the dread of old, , witches before whose dark arts doors would unbolt and betray the victim to exploitation and death, equating it to labouring their lifeblood out to sustain a system of profit over people. \u201cAnd soon the victim ridden through the night, \/ Must feel the aches and pains in every joint – \/ Indeed he must feel his slowly mortal frame\/ So shrivel round his spectral bones\/ As down the slopes of life he sleeps,\u201d he recalls.\u00a0 But this is not even the final catastrophe. A new witchcraft has been institutionalised to be executed by day rather than by night such that the poor have no recourse:\u00a0 \u201cBut now the nights of dread command\/ Do pall indeed to shades of grey…\/ Now see where the witches return\/ In the broad light of day! \/ In three-piece suits they ride on wheels\/ Of the black chariots of our black despair.\u201d \u201cA Hymn to the Greatest God\u201d is a lyrical labour of love for Zimbabwe, the shining epitome of peace, love and unity. \u201cAnd now to all the troubled World\/ The gift of Peace and Love we bring! When \u2018all mankind\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=394\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-06-16T17:10:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-25T14:41:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.herald.co.zw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/KOFI-ANNAN.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" 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\/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Roland Mhasvi\u2019s Environmental Sequence | Blockspace","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=394","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Roland Mhasvi\u2019s Environmental Sequence | Blockspace","og_description":"Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan Roland Mhasvi\u2019s environmentally themed poetry anthology, \u201cTime of the Rupture,\u201d is an impassioned case for the preservation of the planet. Mhasvi advocates for the protection of biodiversity from the scourge of extractive capitalism with an urgency approaching the apocalyptic. The poet\u2019s cause is especially pertinent cause as factory-made carcinogens and poisonous chemicals are endangering mankind and depleting the environment. Issue-based guilds have emerged with Zimbabwe\u2019s political seasons, but environmental writing still has relatively fewer takers. Mhasvi is up to task with this elegantly packaged offering where all life is championed as vital for the sustainability of the planet. The majority of poems in the 32-piece collection revolve around the counterpoint of humanity and the environment with vast expanse of imagery, occasional rhyme and musical cadence. The anthology provokes touches of nostalgia for the natural beauty currently jeopardised by the commercially motivated ills. Poetic homage to nature has been a sustained cause in world literature, from the Romantic Revival to African thoroughbreds like Niyi Osundare. Only the sunny optimism of former dispensations has no claim on exponents writing today as the sustainability of life on the planet has become the foremost question of the day. In 2015, \u201cScience Advances\u201d reported that climate change, chiefly driven by pollution and deforestation, had erased more than 400 vertebrate species off the planet since 1900. The human race is prominently featured among the walking dead if the debilitating patterns are not significantly reversed.\u00a0 Mhasvi\u2019s anthology, written of the threshold of the millennium, demonstrates a rare command of the future. While the creative arrows of his generation shoot backward, Mhasvi is decidedly forward-looking. In 1999, he could process the implications of mankind\u2019s unbridled greed and picture the earth running down to the final catastrophe.\u00a0 Mhasvi\u2019s inordinate esoterica sometimes leave the reader out of the loop and there are instances where wordiness could have been trimmed but the urgency of the whole is never lost. Mhasvi spells out his mission from the outset with a citation of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan\u2019s 1999 Convention on Biological Diversity address:\u00a0 \u201cWe cannot continue to destroy wetlands, forests, marine and coastal habitats with impunity. The destruction caused by human kind will now in turn threaten to destroy future generations.” \u00a0\u201cChildren of God,\u201d an indictment on man\u2019s inhumanity to nature, is a poetic rendering of Annan\u2019s warning. Mankind is indicted for revolving the world around capital at the peril of nature, disfiguring it with extractive machinery and taking no thought of tomorrow. The despairing persona cannot process the escalating menace as mankind feeds nature acid rain and poison gas in response to her care and puts the planet on the line with nuclear brinkmanship. The capitalist establishment is charged for crushing the world under \u201chot industrial wheels.” \u00a0And yet howsoever money accumulates it cannot restore the fulfilment of being at one with the environment. \u201cYour Yesterdays glisten in the graveyards of your wanton kills\/ As your Tomorrows flame\/ In the smoky foundries of your greed!\u201d the poet warns. In \u201cThe Cranium Dunce\u201d puts down the destruction of the planet to lack of consciousness where to know less is to preside over the depletion of the joys and comforts of nature. The state of the mind is equated with man\u2019s stewardship over nature. To know more is pictured as nature in its cheerful vitality, coursing a current of life across the planet. \u201cBut to know less were to trickle round to inland lakes, where the shore stood gaunt and red\/ Against the setting sun – \/ To shrink to swamps and braided ponds\/ Our sinking stream\/ Where shallow pools like broken mirrors, \/ Died along the halting course.\u201d These poems are backed by an empirical case and belong to a wafer-thin category of African literature which more artists need to sign to. Where environmentally themed literature seemed to be a remote abstract, detached from the immediate concerns of the day, it has become the crying need of the African canon.\u00a0 In the past, being captivated by nature used to be regarded as a preserve of foreign travel diaries drawn more to the natural dainties of Africa than to the continent\u2019s people. Now, a line cannot be defined between the two as extractive and industrial ravages are taking a toll on the continent\u2019s rural communities. \u201cNew African\u201d observes that the debilitating trail of climate change is most painfully felt by Africa due to stress factors such as the continent\u2019s low adaptive capacity, high dependence on rain-fed agriculture, disease prevalence and low levels of development. \u201cShade of Grey\u201d is one of the more accomplished pieces for the clarity of the imagery and the potency of the indictment.\u00a0 The poem is homage to the worker, in the pro-poor tradition of Leonard Dembo\u2019s \u201cChinyemu” and Leonard Zhakata’s “Mugove,” is fit to a ready segment.\u00a0 \u00a0Mhasvi recalls the dread of old, , witches before whose dark arts doors would unbolt and betray the victim to exploitation and death, equating it to labouring their lifeblood out to sustain a system of profit over people. \u201cAnd soon the victim ridden through the night, \/ Must feel the aches and pains in every joint – \/ Indeed he must feel his slowly mortal frame\/ So shrivel round his spectral bones\/ As down the slopes of life he sleeps,\u201d he recalls.\u00a0 But this is not even the final catastrophe. A new witchcraft has been institutionalised to be executed by day rather than by night such that the poor have no recourse:\u00a0 \u201cBut now the nights of dread command\/ Do pall indeed to shades of grey…\/ Now see where the witches return\/ In the broad light of day! \/ In three-piece suits they ride on wheels\/ Of the black chariots of our black despair.\u201d \u201cA Hymn to the Greatest God\u201d is a lyrical labour of love for Zimbabwe, the shining epitome of peace, love and unity. \u201cAnd now to all the troubled World\/ The gift of Peace and Love we bring! When \u2018all mankind","og_url":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=394","og_site_name":"Blockspace","article_published_time":"2016-06-16T17:10:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-10-25T14:41:52+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.herald.co.zw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/KOFI-ANNAN.jpg","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"hardsouth","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"hardsouth","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=394#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=394"},"author":{"name":"hardsouth","@id":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/#\/schema\/person\/a336a678f28eacb341ce63c6b84b17d0"},"headline":"Roland Mhasvi\u2019s Environmental 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