Tribute to Julius Chingono - from Mbizo Chirasha

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 the forests with 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’s 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 burning summer season, we never ate the grain of wheat

For we harvested thorns and nervous conditions

Cry my beloved country, country of my skull

Nehanda still snores even after the struggle of Zimbabwe.