(To our mothers here we cherish you, our mothers gone we cherish you some more)

Through bitter tears

That sting mine eyes I

See her bent in the fields

For hours long as sun and moon,

Walk in thunderous rain

Without fear or panic.

I see her back start to crouch

She start to waddle, slow in her pace

Her voice cracked in places,

Her skin begin to shed into

Something dark hiding the secret in her blood,

Her memory lapse and at times

She fail to recognize me.

She was my cosmos

Even before I was born

My body was curled up

in a circumference of peace

cocooned in the warm juices

inside her embrace

thoughtless I clung to her

like she was my life which she was

I saw through her eyes even though

at birth I was blind,

I heard her footsteps echo as I made my first

Shrouded in her skirts still

Through the dim haze of her departure

I see her nurse me with love

Teach me to walk on my own feet

She wean me off her breast telling me

I was a woman grown and beautiful

Picking me off the pebbled path

We both walked and I the only one who fell.

I see her clear now, feel her strength

See through her pain glazed eyes

I didn’t understand then,

Yesterday I sat by the mat on the floor

Where she lay without moving

Her eyes dead as night

My whole body willed for her to open her mouth

Say something or for her to squeeze my hand

Reassure me she would never leave me alone

I watch them fold her arms, close her eyes

Fold her legs, watch them fold me with her

And as they throw earth and stones on her grave

Making sure she does not escape her eternal home

And come back to love me

I am inside with her, they don’t know

All the funeral hymns they sang for her

They sang for me too.

By Batsirai Easther Chigama

3 May 2008

Ndapfugama ndagwadama

Nhai Mwariwe

Ndingawanawo here muface

Anoziva mazita emaruva zana

Akazanirana

Ndingawanawo here muchinda

Asingasvotwi nehama dzangu

Kana dzouya, dzichipinda, dzichibuda

Mumba medu kunge tsuro dzesango,

Dzodya matumbu futunu sehamawo

Dzangu ini mukadzi.

Muchinda akaumbwa zvinodadisa dzinza

Anoti paanofamba pasi rinondengendeka

Hofori yerume papfungwa kwete pachiso

Ndapota hangu mwari asaita uchecheu

Kunge ane mutsipa wendandi kutatamuka

Kana awona vamwe vakadzi, kucheuka

Kuyeverwa ini ndakagara padyo naye

Muchinda, zingizi rinoziva kuti maruva enyika

Haaperi ogogonyerawo pandiri kusvika narini

Nokuti Mwari nyika yotorarama yanyangara

Yazara mazerere ezvirwere, vazhingji vogomera

Kuparara vachiri vadiki.  Vana vazhinji dzave nherera

Nyika yangove misodzi nemisodzi, kusvimha nakusvimha

Ndapota hangu Mwari, ndateterera Mwari we

Ndipeiwo muface

Anepfungwa dzakakura kupinda zviri mubhurukwa

Anokoshesa mhiko yedu nerudo rwedu

Muchinda andinotemba kana aenda kumafaro

Kuti haazofa akapinda nemwenje mudziva

Otuhwina hake asina kusimira

Okukuzva mazerere adzo hosha

Osvika muneredu dumba zorei zorei

Ndapota hangu Mwariwe, ndateterera.

By Batsirai Easther Chigama

8 November 2007

Let me

rise by bending over

to pick another

sister

fallen

Let me be

the one on a chicken bus

to give the woman with a child on her back

my seat

because i know with no doubt

her mother like my own

taught her the same

that if she finds me in her place

no doubt she would do the same for me

Let me be silent

in the face of adversity

yet speak my peace quietly

teaching the next sister

to speak with love

and repremand with the same

let me rise

by bending over

to pick another sister

fallen

without pomp or fanfare

purely reaching out

to the woman in me

Let me be

my sister’s keeper

not to be remembered

by mere words spoken

but by every life my life touched

by every sore my hand touched and soothed

let me

let me be my sister’s keeper.

Will I write that song?

Child
When I get the courage
When I am ready and brave
To bring you in a world
With too many potholes
And frolicking leaders
I want to make sure
You are strong and ready
For the furrowed ride
I will keep you safe for now
Wrapped in my scared womb
Only when I am ready
Will I birth you freely
Like the way this poetry flows from my tongue
When you get here
I mean if you get here
I imagine the joy of your small
Cute smiles and
Your tiny hands curling
Into little adorable fists
Incapable of hurting no one
Then slowly opening like
The petals of a beautiful rose
I imagine in your sleep
You will dream of happy things
And i will watch you stretch
Your tiny limbs
Saying ‘when I grow up I wanna be…
better than mummy’
Like the words flowing from my tongue
You will wear many names of your choice
For I want to give you that freedom from birth
With the easiness of a happy child’s laughter
To make your own choices beginning with your name
Without me breathing down my failed dreams
On you
Child
I want you to be proud in your skin
So comfortable no one can convince you otherwise
Be weary of brain-pickers i would say
Those who will pick on your brains with shamboks
Like they did on the backs of grandma
In the cotton plantations
You will be gifted with brawn
But child that does not mean you are to be a slave
And when you are old like these locks
Tying my world together, at 8
I want your world to be open
Full of limitless possibility
I want you to be brave
Just like me when I bring into this world
To labour for your own happiness
To strive to cut the fences, prejudices
Around the skin you will unashamedly be proud of
My child I seek you to find
All-weather wings
A heart as warm
I want you to find love
Give love
And
Above all, I want you to be you

I will keep you safe for now

Wrapped in my scared womb

Safe from the stale promise of democracy

misfired bullets of hatred

pelting my ears from the radio relentlessly

Safe from circus governments of disunity

pawning our rights & freedoms

like zhing-zhong products at the flea market

Only when I am ready

Will I birth you freely

Like the way this poetry flows…

In memory of Julius Chingono(passed on 02.01.11)

We were miniscule caricatures

Split between the rims of his glasses

Each one of us

Stuffed shirts and too serious

To gather laughter in our stride

He stitched simple paisleys

On our foreheads

That told the world

We were “tighter than

thief’s anus”

All we needed was just a fart

To remind us we are human

After all.

By  Batsirai E Chigama

04.01.2011

You have reached the woman

whose words are not buried beneath her tongue,

who crafts metaphors & similes like

she tends to the tattered garments of her inner untouched soul

that place she can call her own,     

You have reached the woman

who  has dared to stop and take stock,   

who realises the images in the broken mirror are not hers   

but mere distortions of what the world prescribes to her to be

You have reached Batsirai

Inspired by phenomenal women through Nebila Abdulmelik

I want to know how it feels

To make a woman bleed

To death

Without hearing her cries

Without hearing her pleas

Without seeing the death

Of her dreams.

I want to know

How you felt

I was only two

Did your bludgeoning penis

Feel exhilarated

Pulsate with devilish desire

As you forcibly sowed your shameless seed

On my infertile ground

That you mutilated

The ground that will now

Forever remain infertile

Because of you?

I want to know

How you can sleep at night

What kind of dreams you dream?

What kind of man strangles

Fondles a two year old

Was he born of a mother

Like my own who bleeds

Tears every time she sees me

Begging to be forgiven

For not having been there

To protect me for my own father?

Somebody tell me

What kind of a world is this

That sodomises its future

Telling the young ones

Not to believe in love

Not to dream

Not to dare

Not to laugh

Not to treasure life

and believe in humanity?

Tell me somebody

Because I must believe in something

I must believe in things kind

And gentle

I must believe that the sun

Not only shines

For those who stand before it shines

But for those like me too

Whose limbs were severed

Before they even learnt to crawl

I must believe

The world can be better than this!

Raise your hand somebody

If you will help me believe

©Batsirai E Chigama

6 November 2010

You have stared at the ground far too long
You know the tiniest crevices
And all the red and black ants that burrow
Tearing earth’s intestines for you to see
We catch you watching into space
And wonder what captures your mind
Engrossed, you can’t hear us

Where are you?  It seems you died
And buried yourself when father left
Buried us with him and forgot ever
To come sweep the graves now forgotten
Under the leaves of the muchakata
Your silence is a hot pot of seething, lethal oil
We are afraid.

We seek your embrace in troubled times
Yet you are more troubled than us
Can you come back, can we go back to yesterday?

By Batsirai E Chigama

http://zimbabwe.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=5787&x=1

INDEPENDENCE AVENUE

I lost my home to a new road

And they said it was the gains of freedom

My humble burrow in the earth

Was plastered with gravel and tar

Eternally sealing my lips, my voice would never be heard

I yearn for the one they called the dirt road

For then my right to this land was respected

Every day I bear the weight of haulage trucks

Trafficking fellow brothers and sisters seeking the same end as I

My tiny legs knock

And are caught between the hardness of earth and

The hardness of the imposed rock above me

I hear them chant some comrades brave and outspoken

They sing “hapana chakanaka tonosangana kumastreets”

Their voices, distant seem louder than mine

Yet still fall on concrete sealed ears

Them like me the ant beneath the tar

Are on different sides of the road yet seeking the same end

Wings to carry our voices to that place called independence avenue.

©By Batsirai E Chigama

06.09.10