GOODBYE URBAN LIFE
The lights still shine
Twinkling in the African darkness
Spreading their wings
Like stars they are
Good morning urbanization
Dark the clouds are
With little like no fresh air
Only heavy scent penetrates our little world
Industrial gases spiraling up into blue skies
Good afternoon urban life
Cry my beloved acquatic life
For your home is invaded
By sewerage and waste
All the way from Town
Cry Tilapia Breams!
Cry my beloved house sparrow
Cry my beloved mousebird
For the bins are filled empty
The tenant’s food is cooked to the stomach
Nothing left to skirmish on
Rolling dust roads go
From one street to one avenue
With noise and disturbance
That breeds no peace in nature
The soul of a healthy community
Gone in pillage
Born out of a desire home
Exhausted the environment remains
At sunset night clubs illuminate
Pounding like hammer mills
Filled with plastic music
Little prostitutes fly in their high heels like paradise flycatchers
With diseases and viruses to spread
All roofs polluted and contaminated
With cigarette smoke and death
Goodbye ghetto life
Goodbye rising costs for declining resources
Happily I stroll
Along vegetation created before man
To my promised land
Our land of fund and adventure
Goodbye town life
To a quiet Matusadona I go
To stay with the pride of lions
A privileged garden of screaming hyaenas
That giggle and laugh at their restaurants
A land that keeps thy heart thumping
Leopard cat walking
Like beauty queens
Deodorizing the Gwembe Valley
With pungent “leo” scent
Never be affordable
Even on the Indian man’s retail shop
Hippo grunt in the pans
Sacred ibis hunting along the lakeshore
Baboon chant
Celebrating a new Tashinga
For each day unfolds with new initiatives
Initiatives of a well-managed habitat
Where our brothers and sisters play
Hide and seek with impalas
Goodbye expensive life
To the graveyard of Tonga
I go
Now turned into beautiful grazing grounds
Like small football pitch ground they seem
Where Zebras take opportunities
To play like donkeys in rugby jerseys
Only to beautify Africa’s soul
The little heart of the unknown land
Goodbye Ghetto life
A life that left me
With no memories of the buffaloes
That graze along Shenga river
Ground hornbills tip toeing
In less grace than ballet dancers
Wild dogs criss cross in hunt
The unimaginable Starvation Island
And island blessed with their meals
Safe from angry villagers
A life of sight catching events
Yellow billed oxpeckers feeding
On ticks stuck on buffalo rhino and hippos
Goodbye goodbye gold panners
For you I shall not cry
But wonder for my brothers and sisters
As I hide under Colophospermum Mopane
Gazing to a rising African sun
Admiring the Kariba sunset
That took my soul away yesterday
A thief of my heart
Kariba sunset
My darling
Goodbye electricity and water bills
A world of all races
Where lions roar lackadaisically
Baboons saluting a new day with a bark
Easterly fresh air blow
Catching up our souls
With excitement and fund
Goodbye for good deforestation
In crescendo I shall sing
A song with the lilac breasted rollers call
A song known to fish eagles
Serenades of great notes to the spirits
A song to keep crocodiles heads high
A voice that call Nyaminyami River God
To rise to protect
Adorable waters of Lake Kariba
And calm down the Binga Wave
As tourist pour like rain thunder
To rejoice in our land
The Land of the Tonga people
The Gova’s prosperity
Whose land was swallowed
By the whistling and rising Zambezi waters
That moulded my love
Goodbye noisy cars
Streams of rivers flow
From Matuzviadonha in songs
That grow louder into meandering rivers
Louder than Tonga drums I hear
Drums clear and communicating
To the grandchildren of the Gova
A birth of caring offspring
Born in tsetse territories
But bravely I raise my black palm
To wave goodbye
Goodbye to town life
Goodbye for good