Tapera Makadho Poems

I remember the old days
When hunger cleaved clean
The entrails within,
Summer could pass without counting
...

Lend me your pen
Mighty and indelible is its ink
Mysterious, how it gives voice
To a dumb and blank page
...

Where light encounters wall
And fails to penetrate
I am the shadow
I bespeak of the light behind the wall
...

Africa!
Your fauna, your flora, i yearn
In summer, winter or autumn
Yet your deep ravines, vast landscapes
...

The stage was set
By the podium they packed
Waiting for the speech
That I would speak
...

They built them
Barbed wire beds to sleep on
And raised stone-pillar pillows,
They cuddled and kissed in the meadows
...

I dread to tread Montgomery street
Broken are the soles of my moccasins
I dread the shrapnel and the shards of time
Now scattered upon my once beloved
...

I have seen doors of steel
Doors you dare not knock
Doors that hurt the knocking knuckle
...

They waft and burn
Spreading wings by night
And by day disappear
Like flickering dreams
...

There is no more ink
In my fountain pen
Left only is the stink
Of its blots.
...