Once upon a bloody journey in beloved Zimbabwe

September 26, 2008 by Chief K.Masimba Biriwasha ·
Filed under: Poetry

Once, traveling in ragged Zimbabwe
– heartbroken, head pounding
As if a thousand madmen had run amok
All fuelled by propaganda’s machinery
I saw a drunken fight,
Two men sprawled and kicking
Each other on the ground
head-bashing, and blood-gushing
Next to a bus filled to the hilt
Now I was sober like daylight
And couldn’t make why the country had been dragged
Into a cesspit
When I saw the first man rise up
Spitting blood, a crack above his eye
With his tongue lolled out, he screamed:
“When will freedom come?”
Around, people shook heads in agreement

And in that moment, I saw the whole of Zimbabwe
From Mutare to Victoria Falls
Draped in the people’s blood.

Of all the things on that journey
That’s all I can still recall
A country torn apart, and
its people soaked in blood
Like the two drunks fighting to death
Over a political slogan

Maybe that senseless fight
Was the beginning of tearing
Down the walls that divided us.

Tell the world: