Six Poems by Togara Muzanenhamo
PN Review 140, July - August 2001
Man in the Bowler Hat
for Anna
I am now the dislocated stranger
Stationed somewhere in your thoughts,
Dreams, or on the mundane streets you walk:
My back turned, face concealed or obliterated.
Although I am everywhere you fail to notice -
Bunched amongst myself and alone.
I can never speak but only ever stand;
A whole legion of myself, an entire place
Of a faceless face - obstructed or draped.
Like Magritte's men I am now that clad-dressed
Man with all the inessential elements left out.
Hawker (Johannesburg)
Drawing up to a stop-street,
The hawkers approached -
Drawing themselves thinner
By pulling in their elbows
And holding goods over their groins.
Squeezing between cars,
One holds polystyrene model gliders,
Another license stickers,
One, below the red stop-sign,
Holds a poetry book
With my name beneath the title.
He looks like me.
He has my smile tucked within
His left hand shirt pocket.
Winter
We retrieve seasonal blankets from the linen closet,
Wear heavy socks that disguise our crippled feet,
Hiding frost marks of where we tread at night.
Sesame buns and bowls of onion soup
Sit on the kitchen table in impatient light
That rushes off, falling over the slope of the horizon -
Missing all trees, anthills and waking noctivagants.
8:10pm, the radio shut off. We stare at the dead
Bar heater on the cold hearth of the fire place
As the gas lamp's flame hums (its blue sternum stiff -
And bright white head dispersing);
Mother cuts the cold with the flick of a page,
The leather cover of her bible frozen in the lap of her
Knotted rug. She whispers Amen with another slice;
Father's ghost sniffs behind the glass -
Revealed between the curtains' gap.
Summer
Entangled in the thyme bush lay an adder's slough,
Left there to keep us wary as we plucked the needle leaves.
From the scullery window, overlooking borage and fennel,
Was the view of the pondweed's tall thin stipes.
We'd go there - surrounded by dragonflies and anopheles;
Reap bulrushes' velvet heads, place them in creels of plaited reeds -
Then sit beneath the willow peeling green stalks of papyri,
Drying their pith, in the sun, to stick-pens that snapped with ease.
Within the shallow pool a great lizard lay belly up -
Flies sailed upon the white bloated bulge, and the buoyant under tail
Formed a quay for more flies to land.
We'd smell the stagnant water air, pinch our noses tight,
Hold our breaths then breathe the air again.
Nothing could be wrong, not even the swale's putrid smell
Kept us from doing it all again, the next day with our return;
Reaping bulrushes' heads, barefoot, in the cool mud.
Norton
The barefoot pedestrians of Norton town walk the glimmering tar of John O'Groats road, past the small hospital, across the railway track, to the high-density suburbs littered with bottle stores. The streetlamps, orange neons, pave the shadows' path with gold.
At dusk the tar the barefoot residents walk upon shimmers. Some cars drive by - spilling silver on the road; and still they walk - the barefoot residents - past the hall, past an enclosure for vegetable hawkers. They walk on along the street of silver and gold.
They walk to where streetlamps and car lights do not follow, where dust gleans any speckle or glow, along the dusty stretch to where women are elusive shadows and children cough hoarse fruits of phlegm, where no fire burns yet - where houses smell of smoky tin.
Revisiting Hotel Rooms
At night, always the curtains drawn over a wide view of a city without a moon. The beds - always a pale colour. The carpets - a sturdy scrub of deep earth tones, quick foot-steps vacuumed.
No mints beneath the pillows anymore - just dreams cozened by compliment cards, soft music, dimmer-lamps, lifeless reproductions of Gauguin, Klimpt, or watercolour landscapes frozen beneath a floe of framed glass.
Next door is always a couple. They order room service, drink white wine or champagne, fill the passageways with trays of unfinished meals and half empty glasses. They fuck loud - thud against the wall, watch late-night television, sing in the shower; you know them at reception - she holds his arm and whispers in his ear.
When morning comes the light takes time to settle. Keys rattle in the narrow passageways, doors slyly open, trays and sheets are loaded on squeaking trolleys.
You draw the curtains and somehow the windows were never that small, that loud last night; and the streets below, adorned with tiger stripe sun and shadow, are uncomfortably foreign. Unsealing the window all time escapes rashly; and yet I let my sight fall to the ground below - my eyes comb through the intrusion of tall buildings upon the sky.
Togara Muzanenhamo was born to Zimbabwean parents in Lusaka, Zambia in 1975. He was brought up in Zimbabwe, and then went on to study in The Hague and Paris. He became a journalist in Harare and worked for a film script production company. His work has appeared in magazines in Europe, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and was included in Carcanet's anthology New Poetries in 2002. He has published three collections of poetry, Spirit Brides (2006), Gumiguru (2014), and most recently Virga, a Poetry Book Society Autumn Recommendation for 2021. He has been shortlisted for the Jerwood Alderburgh First Collection Prize and the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry.
Subscribe to PN Review magazine at pnreview.co.uk.