MUPANE FOREST LUANGWA VALLEY 1995

MUPANE FOREST LUANGWA VALLEY 1995

Inside birdcage ribs, my heart

lies empty, crushed.

A speckled blue eggshell is glued

by a red speck to a hostage feather.

Broken. Broken.

Dead branches of an old tree

hide slivers of a glass bauble.

Each silver splinter shatters me.

I pick up the shards that stab,

the hook that hangs nothing.

Gone. Gone.

Pain, suppurating, boils from my skin,

blisters of corrosive tears burn and itch.

Let me go. Let me go.

 

A dog mounting a bitch,

grief mates with my heart.

Eight legs stumbling like pall bearers.

No mongrel progeny from this coupling,

but a barren, bitter sterility.

Alone. Alone.

The funereal heart rattles its urn,

choked with pebbles not ashes.

A flint-stone struck by the dull spade rings

a knell for ears stopped with dust.

My tongue is thick with clay.

Bury me. Bury me.

Deep where sightless eyes don't see,

deaf ears don't hear and I can't feel.

Let me be. Let me be.

 

The quiet, grey rain creeps among the dry leaves

padding at the dust with soft paws

promising - promising - to return

tomorrow - tomorrow – perhaps, perhaps.

Pamona, Pamona. Slowly, slowly.

 

A caterpillar goes in demented circles at my feet,

searching to leave her sackcloth skin of fire and hair

and become a slice of orange sunlight drifting for a day

in a glade of trees with butterflies for leaves.

Mupane. Mupane. Mupane.

*Pamona means slowly, gently or carefully in Chinyanja

Mupane is a common tree with butterfly shaped leaves.