Dambudzo Marechera

For something to do let’s forever walk this
Circle they call marriage (forever presumes neither
Beginning nor end) The rigmarole of vows is over.
Remember god allows himself the freedom to be the
centre
Of a circle whose circumference is everywhere (What
Cynicism!)  With caution & luck we too can be the image
Of him.  Love like history is bunk.  Hence let your
attractions range
Free – I have no such intentions with humans at least.
You in this world will dally to surfeit
While I with the dead whose tombs are my brothels
Will oil passion’s stiff joints.  Do not be alarmed:
As they say A LUTA CONTINUA even beyond the
serried graves.

 

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Dambudzo Marechera is a Zimbabwean poet and novelist. He lived a life that most of us who are used to writers like Adichie, Selasi, and even Teju Cole cannot even relate to. He was a different kind of African writer, haunted all his life by racial discrimination and poverty. A misanthrope of sorts and a rebel, he was expelled from the University of Rhodesia and from Oxford. Starting from House of Hunger published in 1978, Marechera produced some of the strangest, most haunting, pain-ridden, and evocative writings that African literature will ever know.