Tariro Ndoro
pick a colour blue the colour of ocean of water of vast expanses and perhaps escape Rusape Dam
rushing like blur before the girl’s eyes to the place where time stops still home
pick a colour white of white boats, white yachts and pillowy sails of the people who swim there the
glistening of fishing rod twine where the girl wants to swim but she is told the river holds secrets the
dam is a crucible of mermaids menfish
and time stands still
screams backwards backwards until
max the taxi driver brings her back to grandmother’s greeting “welcome child of my child, flesh of
my flesh” and everything is like it was before
In the shadow of Tsanzaguru and the lion head Tikwiri
pick a smell wet stones of women hitching their skirts to wade in the river of PerfectionTM soap,
greased onto shirts by women speaking freely a dialect so rare it will be ridiculed out of the girl’s
mouth in later years
pick a smell, then, acrid wet cattle rushing to kick their feet in the dip brown black mottled hides and
curved horns an excursion soon to be outgrown, along with climbing rocks
pick a smell acrid dry of the library her grandfather left behind shelves that still carry Hemingway &
Emecheta but weevils have eaten the pages the plots have holes in them now bags of fertilizer keep
the pages company
pick a sound a clang metal on metal iron sharpens iron cow bells on beasts coming home as the
orange sun sets
pick a sound laughter two sisters playing skip rope in the dust till their feet are brown and ashy on
their tongues – a borrowed song that never made sense:
Christopher Columbus was a great man/ he went to America in a saucepan /
he went to untie, untie, untie/ handy over/
two little sausages in a saucepan / one was rotten... /
and another went to die!
into supper by firelight orange flames and cricket song wood smoke has burnished the walls
remember the girl to those nights where the milky galaxy of bright stars shone sometimes blue
sometimes bright and sometimes shooting across the sky (make a wish! make a wish!) then to gossip
and prayers and an hour of radio one announcements of births and deaths.
pick a sight big silver old moon in the inky black night hanging like low fruit, ripe for picking how
does the story go? old Rozvi kings tried to steal it from the heavens a legend as ancient as the rocks
In the shadow of Tsanzaguru and Mount Tikwiri
pick a smell wet earth wet grass early morning dew cow dung and clean smoke
pick a colour pink frock Sunday best follows her grandmother her grandmother in Anglican blue in
Anglican white in swift gait a surprise baptism: glacial water on the girl’s forehead your name is now
Theresa Maria Patricia the girl forgets her new moniker
a particle, dust, gathers on the baptismal certificate now folded now carefully placed in the cardboard
box labeled Envelopes of Tudor wherein lies the last image of a long dead grandfather last seen alive
in the summer of seventy-six
cause of death:
unknown
Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow Zoom launch of The Only Magic We Know: Selected Modjaji Poems 2004-2020 on 31 March 2022