The African Sun: Collected Poems

By Michael Sheridan Stone

‘The African Sun’ is an eclectic collection of poems linked by one common element, the author’s abiding love for Africa. He rejoices in adventures with elephants, leopards, lemurs, snakes and elusive birds, protests at the precipitous decline in the quality of life in his former homeland of Zimbabwe (whilst taking some comfort from the enduring tradition of ubuntu).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Imprimata Publishers
• Release date: May 19, 2010
• ISBN: 9781906192471

Michael Sheridan Stone

Michael Sheridan Stone was born among the Chiltern Hills in England but spent his formative years in Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe then was). He returned to the country of his birth in his early twenties to study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and has lived in England ever since, practising as a lawyer in industry. However, he remains steadfastly African in heart, spirit, temperament and voice. He is committed to the identification and advancement of the next generation of leaders in Africa and serves as a Director and Trustee of the African Leadership Institute.

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THE AFRICAN SUN

Collected Poems by

Michael Sheridan Stone

Published by Imprimata

Copyright © Michael Sheridan Stone 2009

Michael Sheridan Stone has asserted his rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical or otherwise and whether invented now or subsequently) without the prior written permission of the publisher or be otherwise circulated in any form, other than that in which it is published, without a similar including this condition being imposed on any subsequent publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil action.

Cover photograph by John de Kock, in memoriam

A CIP Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-906192-47-1

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Imprimata Publishers Limited

To Africa - its landscape, wildlife and, above all, its people.

Acknowledgements

As I state in the Foreword, the poems in the book were written to satisfy personal needs and were not intended for publication. That they are now being published is due largely to the encouragement or exhortation of a number of friends, including Arthur, Helen, Margie, Wendy, David, Maeve and Nanika. My thanks are gratefully conveyed to you all and also to Lulu for her assistance with the final preparation of the manuscript.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Zimbabwean Poems

Introduction

The African Sun

First Love

Home

A Soldier

The Peregrine

The Search

Comradeship

The Silence of the Veldt

Elephants

More Elephants

Elephants Again

The Angry Child

The Distant Drums

The Doctor’s Dilemma

Ubuntu

Emptiness

Nostalgia

Barbed Wire

The Birthday Party

Closure

South African Poems

Introduction

The Pumpkin or the Cow

Interlude

Regeneration

Madagascan Poems

Introduction

Madagascar

The Flufftail

The Indri

Zebu

Black Rocks

The Frigatebird

Miscellaneous Poems

Introduction

Communion

Brief Encounter

Africa Revisited

Supplementary Notes

Foreword

I cannot legitimately call myself a poet. I merely have intermittent poetic impulses that are triggered by episodes and emotions, primarily involving Africa. Although I have lived most of my life in England, I am African in heart, spirit, temperament and voice and each year I try to spend time somewhere on the continent. Unhappily my travels no longer encompass my former homeland of Zimbabwe, to which I have no intention of returning until the forces of evil that now dominate and destroy it are spent. But it is forever in my thoughts and much of my poetry has a Zimbabwean theme. Once it was wistful but it has become increasingly pained and angry.

My poetic output is scant and was never intended for publication. I have written my poems to satisfy particular needs of my own and, because they are so personal, I have exposed them to very few people. They have been kind enough to encourage me to share them with a wider audience and this I am doing, albeit with a strong measure of reticence. How can I expect outsiders to relate to my worship of the African sun and the African bush or the joy of my encounters with elephants, leopards, flufftails and snakes or my deep affection for the African people or my implacable opposition to the tyrants who are blighting their lives? I have provided some notes to explain the context or tone of certain poems, or words or expressions in them, but I appreciate that, at least in part, they may remain somewhat opaque or elusive to those without African affiliations.

The poems are divided by geography and, within those divisions, are placed in some sort of chronological order. This does not necessarily indicate when the poems were written, merely when the events that inspired them occurred (or were imagined). In the case of ‘The