Reading Marechera
Sometime in 1983 or 84, Marechera wrote:
A queue as long as the Original Snake
Has since dawn waited to buy cooking oil
Paraffin, petrol, and matches...
Marechera's persona, homeless in "Throne of Bayonets", observes the life, or lack thereof, of night time Harare: "I look at Harare, my hair stands on end". The marginalized speaker, who sleeps in Cicil Square (now Africa Unity Square), observes Harare life with an eye for great detail. His life contrasts with the splendor (and horror) of the city around him. That the speaker, with nothing to give and nothing to lose, nothing to call his except the poetry in his head, notices the struggles of the people around him, perhaps better than they do, is revealing. These people's lining up at dawn for the basics surely attracted the attention of the homeless persona. Fast forward to 2008 Harare and perhaps the persona would not even know what the people were queuing for-- the matches, the petrol, the paraffin, and the cooking oil are nowhere to be found! The lines would probably invoke images of the Original-who-know-what-anymore.
Even as his critical radar captures the incipient horrors of post-colonial Zimbabwe, as the persona seems to pay more attention to the plight of those around him, he presents himself not necessarily as a victim, but with a degree of satisfaction with the way things are. He describes his routine:
I dine on stone and clay
And roam the streets at the end of the day.
Our persona haunts bookstores too, real bookstores with recognizable names:
From the dreaded hours of darkness
I arrive at the Book Centre
Hungry for Knowledge
And spend precious life browsing
Through nihilistic theories.
There is this deep hunger, this insatiable quest for knowing what's there to know, or not to know:
Will I ever know how much
I cannot ever know--place and pace
of coherent poetry in the gibberish rhythm
Of available "reality?"
Indeed, a rich poem.
A queue as long as the Original Snake
Has since dawn waited to buy cooking oil
Paraffin, petrol, and matches...
Marechera's persona, homeless in "Throne of Bayonets", observes the life, or lack thereof, of night time Harare: "I look at Harare, my hair stands on end". The marginalized speaker, who sleeps in Cicil Square (now Africa Unity Square), observes Harare life with an eye for great detail. His life contrasts with the splendor (and horror) of the city around him. That the speaker, with nothing to give and nothing to lose, nothing to call his except the poetry in his head, notices the struggles of the people around him, perhaps better than they do, is revealing. These people's lining up at dawn for the basics surely attracted the attention of the homeless persona. Fast forward to 2008 Harare and perhaps the persona would not even know what the people were queuing for-- the matches, the petrol, the paraffin, and the cooking oil are nowhere to be found! The lines would probably invoke images of the Original-who-know-what-anymore.
Even as his critical radar captures the incipient horrors of post-colonial Zimbabwe, as the persona seems to pay more attention to the plight of those around him, he presents himself not necessarily as a victim, but with a degree of satisfaction with the way things are. He describes his routine:
I dine on stone and clay
And roam the streets at the end of the day.
Our persona haunts bookstores too, real bookstores with recognizable names:
From the dreaded hours of darkness
I arrive at the Book Centre
Hungry for Knowledge
And spend precious life browsing
Through nihilistic theories.
There is this deep hunger, this insatiable quest for knowing what's there to know, or not to know:
Will I ever know how much
I cannot ever know--place and pace
of coherent poetry in the gibberish rhythm
Of available "reality?"
Indeed, a rich poem.
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