Other Worlds Untold: An Anthology of African Poetry

By Runesu Chazvemba

A panoply of poems all in free verse exploring the abstract and enchanting, sublime realm carved in words and drawn with such an abandon and flourish upon the vast canvas of a creative tapestry. The poems beg to be felt, to be perceived through a faculty that cleaves to something ineffable and yet draws upon the effervescent, that deep yearning chasm that only the beauty of sound and word can satiate. It is an invitation to tune into the whispers and resonance of that seat of aesthetics. Having thus been given form with an imagery and form that finds acquaintance with and invites familiarity with a much broader audience, the poems solicit the participation of the reader, where the reader is enticed into and consequently immersed in the sparkling waters of the Pierian Spring and, as one, flow down enchanted brooks and taste the sweetness of inclusivity where all waters meet in the vast ocean of feeling and being.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Oct 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482809497

Runesu Chazvemba

Runesu Chazvemba is an educator, instructor, researcher, philosopher, poet, playwright, short story writer, and novelist with an extensive knowledge and experience in the education sector, where inspiration is drawn from to create a potpourri of poems that spring from the depth of the soul and heart. He presents a masterful vignette of poems on multiple subjects, from the mundane to the spectacular.

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Copyright © 2015 by Runesu Chazvemba.

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Contents

Shards of our ancestors

The Fading Dream of Noon

Phoenix Plummeting

Dragon in flames

The Valley of Despair

Atavistic Yearnings

The builders of Zimbabwe

Liberty*

A burning

Intellectual Revolt

A Taste of Wine

Invincible Spirit

Love Lost

Aviary Courtship

A Note to the Elders

Without Poetry

Day Dreaming

In Sleep

Love interred

Chrysanthemum

Without Memories

Atlantis

Fencing Swords

The Phoenix

The Ancient Dreamers

Wisdom Seekers

The Heart

The Room

Fascination with Apparitions

The Beastly Savage

Self-Mastery

A Conquering Spirit

Woman

Innocence

Faith

Immortality

Death

Life

War

Love

Nature

Mother

Victory

The journey

The Spirit of Man

A Brawl

It stops now

Poetry

Conflict

Mosque Shattered

The Apothecary

Apostasy

The Immaculate Victim

Night

Oh Time!

Catharsis

The intellect

Words

The human body

Night sky

This idyllic garden

The Mouse

Marriage

Other worlds

The Mystic

The Mind gazer

The Embrace

The Ratcheting Battle

A Raging Fire

Ode to freedom

Other worlds untold

Wizardry

The universe

Twinkle Three Stars

The Self

Silhouettes

Rivulets of blood

Tear drops

Dreamscape

The sleeping ogre

Self-love

Self-abnegation

Monkey

Christmas

Unrequited love

Nature of Flowers

Bones of our ancestors bequeathed

Penury chant

Viper Slithering

Self-love

The Nocturnal Lamp

A Chaotic Mess

A Being Shrunk

Summer Winds Wafting

The Price of Being

Within the Cranial

Pierian Spring

A Self Torment

Free Will

Imagination

A Feisty Breeze

Lights

Sisterly Love

A Torrent

The Modern Cave

The Shoes

A Love Poem?

Dedications

To the late Samson Edzai Chazvemba, my beloved father who nurtured nascent philosophical leanings in me from the crib may the torch that you lit shed its light onto the world eternally.

To my partner Natalie Fajer, mother, Betty Chazvemba and siblings Rangarirai, Blessing, Brian, Angelina, Tawanda and Gracious Chazvemba for being pillars in my life.

To the General reading public

This book is affectionately and tenderly dedicated to you

Acknowledgements

"Across the mental scape dreams grand and untold unfold, creativity unrestrained, unbridled bursts forth to gather into something tangible, something with form and shape that prances excitedly on the vast stage of life." Samson Edzai Chazvemba

This collage of free verse poems would not have been possible without the support and help of family and friends along the winding valley of creativity that I transversed, it is in recognition of this help in all forms that I would like to acknowledge the following; Natalie Fajer for her wit and companionship and candour and a beacon of hope in tempestuous storms. Taryn Retief, Prosper Makosa, Douglas Shumbayaonda for lending an ear to my philosophical rumblings and reading my manuscripts, Garikai Matiki, Stephen Navaya, Makuyana, Brenda Humutyei, Walter Mazenda, Nicole Couto-Leite, Lance de Leeuw, Jackie Letsatsi, Ronald Chigunwe, Shorai Dzvinamurungu, Fungayi Tafangewamwe, Ibrahim, Mahomud Essacky, Canaan Madoda to mention but a few, to these I am eternally thankful.

‘Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject’ Keats

Shards of our ancestors

O n a craggy hill bones calcifying protrude

Pockmarked white ashes in the sun expiring

Roots firm and steady once on the earth tread

The sustaining frame from which it all hang

Now it lies in repose a testimony to yesterday

Oh glory interred coalescing with mud to merge into oblivion

On this vast plain swept in the shimmering wind of a time gone

The phantom of times ancient whisper beckoning to all and sundry

To hearken to the eerie sound of tormented voices

Vessels rent asunder at the seam of enraptured dreams

Fading foot-prints in the sand of escaping memories

To gather in the dunes of hopes lofty and enchanted

Quietude enwraps itself upon the desolation of a yesterday untold

Youth spawned with an umbilical cord already severed

Cast adrift with no connection to the glowing dome of yesterday

To the gold that encased the famed citadels of stone enclosures

Of spirits that whispered in the stones and roamed the plains

Custodians of man and all that lives and breathes with passion and fire

Shards of our ancestors hue to ancient times of honey and milk

Of a glorified innocence that brooked no mischief or evil inclinations

In the whispering wind a magical story of yore is replayed

Such a melodious tune it plays that cleaves to the heart with sweet promise

Of images sublime dancing at the periphery of a vanishing dream

Shards of our ancestors rattle in the resonance of a beating drum

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