Poem by Togara Muzanenhamo

Togara Muzanenhamo (pictured here) 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.

The poem below is taken from his debut collection, recently out from Carcanet, The Spirit Brides. Eyewear is very glad to welcome him to these pages this Friday.

The Laughing Wood

A rock and a river,
And on the rock a blade of sunlight intensifying the colour of moss.
The sound of water
Flowing down into the valley where they found the bags.

I have never seen a fairy,
But she professed to seeing fields of them, at play, in flight.
And to talk of them in the sparkle
Of sunlight amid the dreamy sound of water; that was a great pleasure.

The moss was warm and soft,
She lay with her head in her palm and knee up,
Exposing her inner thigh
As the river flowed down into the valley where they found the buried bags.

poem by Togara Muzanenhamo

Comments

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