Gumiguru

by Togara Muzanenhamo

Overview

Gumiguru is the tenth month of the Shona calendar—a month of dryness and heat before the first rains fall and rejuvenate the land. Togara Muzanenhamo’s second collection is a cycle of poems distilling the experiences of a decade into one calendar year, framed through the natural and agricultural landscapes of Zimbabwe. The book stands as both an elegy for the poet’s father and a hymn to the veldt, the farms, the villages, and the men and women whose lives are interwoven with the land and the changing seasons.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847772572
Publisher:	Carcanet Press, Limited
Publication date:	11/01/2014
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Togara Muzanenhamo 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 is the author of the poetry collection Spirit Brides.

Read an Excerpt

Gumiguru

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By Togara Muzanenhamo

Carcanet Press Ltd

Copyright © 2014 Togara Muzanenhamo
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-483-5

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CHAPTER 1

    Alderflies


    Naked and afraid, the girl doubled up with a shrill
    that filled the rear-view, the red sun thick off her hair,
    her lips peeled back over teeth clenched on tails of air
    shredded thin by speed. A rush of rich carmine silt ran
    swollen under the bridge, the dry knock of the wheel
    pitching the battered Hilux over the ungraded road.
    Again her face resurfaced, alone in the mirror, the strain
    of the breech birth tightening her breath, the road
    rolling stoically to its cruel end where a dirt-strip took
    us up to a quiet clinic set at the foot of the mountain.
    There, blood and limb turned cold between her thighs.
    The drive back home was all silver light and tussock
    grass fields, low heavy gears moaning to the turn-off –
    the road speckled black, the river's bruised serigraph
    woven wet with the brisk evening flight of alderflies.


    The Chronicles


    for Jessie


    They still drew the old roller over the cricket pitches with men
    yoked like a team of oxen to the stubborn iron wheel.
    The grass smelt as the grass did, all rich beneath the afternoon sun –
    the heat flashing off the ground like a blinding flick of steel.
    All the fields were there – much smaller than remembered –
    the rugby and football grounds unused, the powdered lime lines
    washed out by the rains, but the names of dead Jesuits, on signs,
    still stood on the preened edges – in traditional white and red.

    Up into view the memorable tower of stone rose with all the dreams
    of climbing up the winding cool stairwell, up to the top of the turret
    where thoughts of fields, soft with warm breaths of red-top, met
    the sky with hope and refuge. But those were just a schoolboy's dreams
    brought on by the sight of the huge bronze plaque of St George
    plunging his spear, extinguishing our fears of the dragon.
    Though all that bullshit vanished with age, the hero on the forged
    plaque still remained some old myth the Jesuits liked to work on.

    'I'm here to go through the Chronicles. '86 to the mid 90s.'
    The receptionist is grey and half-deaf, I'm apparently soft-spoken –
    so there's a lot of repetition accompanied by grimaces and apologies.
    'I'm here to go through the Chronicles.' 'Yes,' to another question,
    'I did attend here some years back. Yes, an Old Georgian, an old boy.'
    The phone slowly goes up to her ear as she mentions something
    about visits and strange requests from foreign journalists wanting
    to sit in on classes or have private interviews with the boys.

    'Penny? Yes Penny, it's me. I seem to have a safe one here.
    Wants to go through the Chronicles. Something about poetry.'
    Her small eyes look up. 'You do remember the way to the library?'
    I had forgotten, but then retrace the steps in my mind to get there.
    Each class I pass, a voice spills from the mock-Edwardian windows,
    the red polished floors tap under my feet, and a sweet blessedness
    fills me that I'm not sitting in those sweat-rooms of learning, shadows
    of my youth, daydreaming about a new world after the first kiss.

    The study-hall has lost all its desks and holds an array of instruments
    and chairs for classical musicians. The fountain in the quad is gone now,
    and at first it didn't mean a thing to me, but then a crude bewilderment
    took hold when a memory tried to find its place in the absence; and how
    on earth they removed it had me lost – the lawn was perfectly smooth.
    The weights room, where our hands were beaten blue by a leather wad,
    where iron was pumped on hot afternoons, was now clean and had
    the smell of sweat and leather replaced by veneered computer booths.

    Outside an office, a boy lifted his hat and said 'Good morning' in a way
    that had me question what he'd said. It was only when I looked back
    that I noticed the strain on his face, his rheumy eyes and the big black
    word scoured across his chest, FAGGOT. I could see how easily they
    could have pinned him down. The tree was there where we sat at break
    trying to forget the colour bar that still hasn't faded outside the gates;
    the smell of msasa leaves and old orange peels revived a dead ache
    that filled my belly: a mob outside the science-labs, fists of other kids ...

    When I met Penny she smiled, and something told me
    it wasn't a strange request to come here and go through the Chronicles.
    She had them stacked up on her desk, all piled up chronologically –
    towers of memories, names and dates in black and white at my disposal.
    I sat down, leafed through the pages, the photographs alive in my head;
    and after an hour of being immersed in the vivid quiet, the bell rang:
    it was still that same high-pitched drill that once brought relief as it sang
    through the long corridors, but also brought with it a certain dread.


    All the Good Help


    He will not understand her fascination
    with rain, these summer months of water
    that somehow keep the money coming in,
    paying for the nurses his granddaughter

    has slowly learnt to trust. Now all the good
    help is gone, he feels he can spot liars
    with one look; and if he could, he would
    take care of her himself. All these prayers

    for a new body! She doesn't understand
    the joke, but simply stares out the window
    where an old broken-down tractor stands

    in the backyard, grass screaming out of
    worn sprockets, joints rusting above slow
    gulfs of shadow shot wild with foxglove.


    The Wire Gang


    Seasons slip and flow through jackalberry and wattle.
    Veldt and rock glisten with the redolence of minerals
    rising off dew. Savannah skies brighten. Rollers settle
    on telephone lines, the thin shine stringing paddocks
    out north where flat farmland undulates into blue hills
    textured soft by the way the distant rural land looks.

    By the time the grass is dry, a worn path runs along
    the wire-line. Tobacco smoke accompanies the work –
    thuds on earth and shunts of steel, the auger's song
    screwing deep into the soil – hollowing out each hole.
    Broken ground receives treated wood, creosote dark
    on calloused hands piling in each staggered gum pole.

    Beneath munhondo and stinkwood, bales of wire
    gleam – sun-spat and charged. A sack of milled grain
    stands beside an old billycan boiling over an open fire.
    Men's shadows fall side by side with nature and labour –
    the sun dictating the wire's ease, dawn's hard vein
    softened beneath a sky offering the malleable pallor

    afternoons endorse with heat. And when the slack line
    is lifted – tension drawn pole to pole – rungs of flash-
    lit staves sing along a bluish reel, the barbed shine
    running miles, a song running deep into the horizon.
    And men have died by the wire, the easy give of flesh,
    the slip of a drawn force whistling with a final hymn

    the soul must praise and resign to. But the gang work
    on – the skill of faceless men working for the land's
    gain. From sun-up to sunset, over savannah and rock,
    the workforce strumming pole and steel, laying wire,
    squaring acres off; each labourer's hardened hands
    knowing nothing but work, a wife's skin, and prayer.


    The Surgeon's Knot


    He wades out a few feet where the current slows
    to form fingered wash lines mingling into the pool.
    His shadow bathed in gin water. Black fern and rock
    asleep on the riverbed. Unaided, he struggles to work
    the rod, whipping the fly through the air – bulrushes
    wild with mating displays of bishops and widows,

    red jewelled damselflies. The sun slowly reels left
    over thick green forests hugging native hills. Clouds
    of midges hover above mud banks like magic grain.
    He savours the soothing views, the cool mountain
    air lulling the pain he endures, the reel's white mercury
    whistling wet above his head. With each fly swept

    downstream, each spent thought rides the drifting
    naturals, slipping into the current's glassy sinews.
    Sun-snatched kisses draw him in deeper. The river
    cold at his hip, the hypnotic depth haunted by silver
    turns cut white with speed. Gaunt yet staid, he stands
    sewn into a corner of the Gairezi – sedge-fly rising

    gently off the film. There, he cuts the line and ties
    another on, the hackled fly dark as the angled hook –
    the line's tapered shine waiting for cupped threshes
    to take the light. And there he waits, freckled flashes
    of muscle twisting wild between rock and shadow,
    the flexed light churning the shallows of his eyes.


    In the Music of Labour


    At first the stubborn growth resists him, till each stroke
    is fluently flung to clear the knee-high grass, his task
    down to an art, the pendulous swing of knees slightly
    giving, his right arm catching the sun wet off the blade.

    All day the work, shuffling steps into shuffled clearings,
    beetles and crickets rising off cordite clicks sparking
    off stone, bearded chin sequinned with sweat. The heat
    seems not to bother him, but steels his concentration

    deep in the trials of his faith. Why the sun rises and falls,
    why his jaundiced wife believes God will save them all,
    is just as unclear as why his newborn's unfinished death
    hangs heavy on every dawn. In the music of his labour,

    each composed thresh throws slashed grass to sunlight,
    each mastered stroke floats timed beneath the weight
    of the sun burning deep into his heart, the mastered art
    of his arm fluent with the song the hours constantly sing.


    At Measure


    It's the dreamy air that will send you off to your death,
    the dark silence stoking amber light in the distance.
    And you're heading home, the car droning along at speed,
    that safe speed that keeps your blood warm and cradles
    your heart. Your foot's steady on the accelerator, every
    peaceful thought you own kneels at the altar of your being.

    Stars play accomplice to the magic of small villages,
    neon lights hurtle by without sound – the names of towns
    flung into the glass depth of your rear-view, where
    everything vanishes. Fourteen hours straight at
    the wheel, in three hours' time it will be her birthday;
    you'll walk silently into the house, slip off your shoes,

    climb the stairs, undress, then slide into bed with her.
    You'll make love, and stay up till dawn embraced in the age-
    old gesture. Through West Nicholson to Colleen Bawn,
    the darkness parts for you, the car slips through time.
    On the seat beside your own: a veined roadmap of South Africa,
    a small velvet jewellery box, a bottle of warm red wine.


    The Parlour


    Light on his heels and proudly Rhodesian,
    the professor pours each measure of gin like
    an ace loving the sound of ice on glass.
    Rainfall rings off roof tin – Virgil, the Alsatian,
    snug asleep with Dante the Labrador; Jesus!
    Fucking lazy bastards, snuggled together like
    Siegfried & Roy, sniffing up each other's
    arses! Large hairy balls thundering purple as
    plums. Two boys, delicate young Audens,
    lie sprawled on sofas with G&Ts, subscription
    New Yorkers carelessly flung to the floor.
    'Take your drink long or short?' – 'Depends
    on the glass.' Then small talk about education,
    the importance of poetry and the past – Taverner
    in the background, twill damask drapes
    falling from ornate brass railings, cherubs
    on the ceiling frigging around God. Two grape-
    blue lampshades, held by more naked cherubs,
    stand in sweet smoky corners, white marble
    skin grey in the warm-lidded air, work table
    stacked high with books, walls all spines
    and names. The professor groans, leans back
    into his armchair, Peterson pipe cool, thumb
    on bowl like a gavel ... corrupt senators mine
    our lives for another war, he says, stamping black
    ash on to the flat of his supine palm.


    St Joseph's Fields


    Again, the Ayres Thrush flips up then dives fast from
    the sky, pale breast skimming over the row crop, white
    mist sour off each wing before rising above blue gum;
    the field shadowed by the windbreak's muscled height.
    Nose up, and the craft banks left, the sky a summary
    of dreams caught in a blue vault where each memory

    lies anchored for a while then dissolves. Again, the low
    flight buzzing over soy, the craft's paper-weight echo
    lifting after the final run – the fine spray rolling slick
    through broadleaf laid flat beneath the sun; blue gum
    short off the craft's belly. Then, the sky's automatic
    turn to the east, altitude locked above a gutted home-

    stead where a pool's emerald glare throws sunlight
    up like a polished jewel, torched outhouses cavernous
    and bare. Two trailers lie jack-knifed beside a white
    Bedford truck stripped back like a rotting cattle carcass.
    From there, fields turn wild with grass – open vleis
    spattered white with settlements of St Joseph lilies,

    tall blooms bowing miles without a thought of town.
    From the air the faint shadow of the craft is thrown
    to the ground by a desolate sun, the plane a bird over
    marshland, a bird flying through uncalculated freedom
    where one incessant thought begins to pry another
    with the wish to leave what was always known as home.


    The Naming of a Child


    It began with a leisured cycle of turning strokes,
    every breath drawing on syllables, her name dug
    from each jab stirring the brown muddy water.
    An upward glance took in bare skies, corncrakes
    weak on the wing, the slow evening light – slug-     silver. Stroke after stroke, warm turns of water
    rippled back to quiet mud banks where plover
    pressed banded breasts against the inverted sky.
    The sun fell bald with thoughts of our daughter
    swimming in your womb, her arms turning over
    with mine till depth drew me to stop and look up
    and hear nothing but starlight crowning the sky.
    There, in the music, she was named, deep in the cup
    of the agrestic valley where sound worships water
    and flows into the cradle of every villager's arm,
    the sweet consistency of life, expectant and warm.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Gumiguru by Togara Muzanenhamo. Copyright © 2014 Togara Muzanenhamo. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Alderflies,
The Chronicles,
All the Good Help,
The Wire Gang,
The Surgeon's Knot,
In the Music of Labour,
At Measure,
The Parlour,
St Joseph's Fields,
The Naming of a Child,
Audition,
Kubvumbi,
The Dish,
His Sunday Shift,
And Evenings Come Like This ...,
Engine Philosophers,
Cirrus,
Copper Fall,
Nagapie,
VHS,
State House,
The Wheel Brace,
Moonflowers,
Gleaners,
At the Work Yard,
A Pale View of Citrus Fields,
Barely Sixteen,
Candle Thorn,
A Faith,
Tobacco Country,
Oxbow,
Amnesia,
Portrait off a Water Trough,
The Coucal and the Smoker,
Gates of Dawn,
Hunters' Society,
A Place for a Windmill,
Easygoing,
Gunyana,
Daughters of Our Age,
Savannah Chapel,
The Fig-route,
On the Balcony,
A Killing,
On Sunday Mornings,
Family Portrait,
Empress Mine,
Gumiguru,
Credence,
Flight,
Water,
The Apostle,
The Reduction,
Open Country,
Mercantile Rain,
Now the Boy's Not Coming Along,
Hat-trick,
Facsimile of a Quiet Country,
Zvita,
About the Author,
Also by Togara Muzanenhamo from Carcanet Press,
Copyright,