Tendai Mwanka

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR

We are these cells
This soul, this being
We are the children's bones
Which you now chew
With lips of a sunrise
We are the choices
The reasons
Of our own awakening
We are light
That has sipped
Through the windows
For all these generations
Innocent little children
Dancing to Mugabe's songs
For a season of enough food
To atone for his angers
We are a hunter
Prowling, punting, caught
In his own snares
That the hunter could
Would--, did, dream
We are a tidal wave
In limpopo river
Of desiccated corpses
And broken dreams
Going somewhere?
We are flickering whimsy
The world's laughter
And like playground tricks
Limpopo's breezes
Is just a breath's laughter
We are the sacrificial dove
The hooting owl
The forlorn falcon!
O those surreptitious angels
In their sweet anger
Sour anger, so angry
Muttering of dreams
Deep, dreams deep, lost
In our own silences
We are haunts cries
Zimbabwe 's little children
Maimed, touched, butchered
The aftermaths of, wrecks of
The world's silent battles
We are Mugabe's little
Lilies, roses, vegetable-
Garden, a fine theatre
Of lost relics, so damned
See, just look at this beauty
Built upon your rejections
For the sun is rising
In the favored east
The west is now busy
In its own illusoriness
Gazing at this spider
Weaving allowed webs
And that angry tinder
Has become this desperate
Time's warped old man
Weaving, always weaving
Echoes of his own angry youth
Tender weaves of a time
Over there in Masvingo
Over there in Manicaland
The winds of change is blowing
Over there in Harare
Over here in Bulawayo
A story has been told
What else do you want
To hear for you to believe
The cries you have heard
Stop this man, please stop him
For we don't need him anymore
Where is the UN
Where are you USA
Europe , Australia , Canada
China doesn't give a hoot
But for our mines, factories, labor
And the east is in silent approval
Thabo is Mugabe's little terrier
Africa has thanked us with
And we are now dry leaves
In their intricate whisperings
Being blown here and there
With no place of our own
Refugees in our birthright
A world's sight of contempt
Augmenting to a morning
Afternoon and night
Year after year, and another
Of their silent conversations
Known as silent diplomacy
Always quivering to Mugabe's trickery
And lying to an uncaring world
Hear that fool, just listen to his
"We are engaged in silent---
diplomacy, silent diplomacy me!
My life! Bugger off old crooks
We are this pen
These resistances, the unappreciated
Voters whose vote is stolen in daylight
We are the aftermaths of voting
Casualties, casualties, casualties
Constructing these sentences
All alone, unaided, lighting
The threshold to that wordless potent
Rise up, oh rise up
Our beloved country men
Wise up, or wise up
The silences beyond our borders
Do you want another
Rwanda , Kenya , Burundi---
Turn your eyes
From the riches of oil
O the oil, if we had oil
Rather than blood in our rivers
Just think of---
That child in Murehwa
That young man in Nyanga
That old woman in Zaka east
And that tot in Mazowe east
They have been striped naked
Look at that child-
What do you see?
Have you seen the rivers?
Of tears, blood and sweat
All over her body
"There is no African problem"
Smith and Muzorewa smothered
Newsman with Kipling's genius
Yet Zimbabwe is a boiling pot
Making garbage soups
And Mugabe's blood cocktails
Whilst Mbeki smothers
The world with Mugabe's refrain
‘THERE IS NO CRISSIS IN ZIMBABWE "
Have we believed too much
In Africa , UN, and the USA
Australia , Canada and EU
Or had we bitten more dreams
Than Mbeki could ever chew
And we are now waiting
For someone who never comes
Only one path remains son of the soil
Through the harsh and arid desert
To where love and hope
Refuses to its unrefusing core
O, why, what are you waiting for?

Tendai Mwanaka has published poetry in Kritya, Language and Culture, Poetry Life and Times, Idiom 123, Kta, Decanto, and many other iterary magazines in South Africa, UK, Snited States, Australia, Canada, and India. He worked in Harare, Zimbabwe as a sales and marketing administrator at Amtec Motors.