Under The Blue Roof

Cherry

By Ewan

Sun, 19 Nov 2017
  • 1313 reads
3 comments
 

 

Robert and Grace look out at the guards

smoking, joking, laughing out loud

in the still carefully tended grounds.

This is a comfortable confinement

not like Salisbury, Wha Wha or even Que Que.

What will it give birth to?

 

Grace is speaking,

Robert is not listening.

He is remembering;

the tree that grew

while Rhodesia

locked him away,

house arrest in exile

in Mozambique,

and how he misses

the slippery rock.

 

Grace is always speaking,

as her children do,

“speak and spend”:

it could be a political slogan

- maybe it was.

 

Robert is remembering

reading Eliot in a cell.

An older poet’s words

are more potent now:

in Africa, all

are Ozymandias,

in the end.

 

Footnote: Robert and Grace Mugabe continue under house arrest here

Certificate U
Poem
Days Like These
Miscellaneous

Comments

Submitted by Parson Thru on

I must get out of saying "Wow!"

It gives me a canine laugh and puts me in a hockey skirt.

Your erudition shines again, Ewan, driving another nail into the plaque that reads "It matters".

Sent me packing to Wiki again. A trip well worth the effort.

You've crafted an observation steeped in human experience, truth and tragedy.

Parson Thru

Submitted by Ewan on

anybody) off. I was reading a newspaper and they mentioned that Mugabe read Eliot whilst imprisoned in The 60s and 70s. Now apart from the fact that we (I) foolishly believe that art, poetry, music etc. are civilising forces, and thus can scarcely believe it of him, what on earth did he make of The Hollow Men and more specifically one of the epigraphs?

The Slippery Rock was one of the names for Joshua Nkomo, much in the way that The Crocodile is a name for Zimbabwe's President-in-Waiting.

As to poetry mattering or not, it's the only way I can make sense of days like these... (hoho).

That's more than enough drivel from me. Thanks for reading, PT and thanks eds for the cherryfication.

Ewan

Author Page at the 'Zon
 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Enjoyed the drivel. Your point about reading the Mugabe-Eliot link in the paper made me smile and makes the world seem reachable.

Interesting. I should start buying a paper again. I was reading an editorial in El País on Thursday over breakfast, but it was painfully slow. I'll look for an English one.

Parson Thru