gems[for dambudzo marechera: guardian fiction prize winner for house of hunger].

we are still panning
the literary gems inexhaustible
in the diamond fields of your estate
that vast and prophetic literary estate

panning for polished gems
from the house of hunger
the streaming black sunlight
there in the cemetery of mind

you left society shell shocked
prose and poetry in motion
through hararean mazes
leaving a trail of labels

grim necessity knocking

the truth sinks in
like softly falling rain
on parched soil

not the nymphomaniac
but out of grim necessity
the road to whoredom

the faithful housewife
facing certain starvation
everyone has a price

walk away shame faced
any woman can be a whore
and any man a robber

that false modesty drowned
in the quicksand of reality
the cop knock of grim necessity

unholy alliance

built on centuries of military adventurism
built on centuries of mass extermination
the arawak indians totally annihilated
the aborigines mercilessly butchered

anglo-saxon blood is the most precious!
the propaganda machinery at full throttle
africans still under the yoke of slavery
mass extermination schemes thwarted

to the foundation

sucking my juices dry
these primeval beasts

asking me to be contented
for my reward is in heaven

giving me pie in the sky
when i go hungry and thirsty

raising choking clouds of dust
with their fast imported cars

bickering over titles and trinkets
enslaving us in false cosciousness

in those cobweb laden huts
fertile ground for macchiavellian ideas

am i a victim of the system
built on people's misery