I saw men and women bowing down (in answer to Musaemura Zimunya)
I saw men and women bowing down,
prostrating themselves around red hot fires
in front of the ancestral spirits
and they begged to worship stone,
believing a peculiar bird statue
to have power in its silence,
to be older, greater and more wise
than Moses, even the Lord Jesus Christ
and they were begging demons
to walk among them,
and begged for fire to flow
out of that dragon
and for the fury to come
but rock stayed only rock,
a silent lifeless dead thing
and the cities constructed by the white man
was faltering and pestilence
and poverty covered the land
while stolen farms went to ruin
and death followed every new moon.
[References: Climbers, Zimbabwe and The Stone Speaks by Musaemura Zimunya.]
poem by Gert Strydom
Added by Poetry Lover
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