Of politics, religion and monkeys
MUSAEMURA ZIMUNYA’S collection of poems “Perfect Poise and other Poems” (1993) explores the analogy that exists between politics and religion on the one hand, and politics, religion and life on the other.
Through a contrived use of words necessitated by poetic licence that he enjoys; metaphor and imagery, the poet says everything about power struggles, tyranny and betrayal without openly provoking anyone.
His poetry is refreshingly original as the idiosyncratic symbols used, though burdensome at times, tell an individual story that captures the aspirations, desires and yearnings of an entire family, community and nation.
Through chronicling his own biography, the poet takes the reader on an intriguing voyage of love, the passage of time, deceit and hypocrisy.
Zimunya (pictured) effectively uses ambiguity as his forte in condemning human folly. As is the case in his earlier poetry, especially in “Country Dawns and City Lights” (1985) and “Kingfisher, Jikinya and Other Poems” (1982), the poet uses images drawn from nature to expose the vice inhering in man, which does not only scald others, or the natural environment that surrounds him, but burns himself as well.
The geographical landscape that shapes Zimunya’s poetry articulates itself in its exposure of the impermanence of whimsicality and other human ills.
The collection is divided into three sections — Perfect Poise, Gallery and Last Word
— which makes it easier for the reader to follow the thematic issues raised. In the first section which has the title poem “Perfect Poise” Zimunya highlights the exuberance that comes with one’s first love encounter, the power of love when it is still in its prime and the subsequent distance that creates a void in relationships.
The boy who is thrilled by his first kiss in “First Kiss” reminds his sweetheart in “Dance” how he: “Came to you like a raging storm/You flew into my embrace like a flower in agony/Thus, we whirled and whirled/till the night yielded the gentlest/ songs of dawn.”
The visual images of the “raging storm” and “flower in agony” are suggestive of the intensity of their love, which makes them whirl and whirl through the night into another day.
However, if read closely the images have a connotative meaning as they seem to be a premonition of doom because to love is to be prepared to be hurt.
This is made poignant in the poem “Like Twenty Years Ago” as the persona who obviously is the same one in “First Kiss” flashes back to his youth and describes the apple of his eye, which has not changed in any way.
Her beauty, lips and eyebrows have remained as infectious as ever, yet he has become alienated from her and is now “unable/to rediscover her old fancy/or surmount this chasm between us/I am unable to look in her blackberry eyes”.
He thus, becomes the “raging storm” that places a psychological load on the woman; hence the image of the “flower in agony” becomes apt. It is this unappreciative nature of men that creates distances in marriages or relationships, which the poet is contemptuous of, as it leads to the break-up of unions as alluded to in “Broken Union”.
The poem “Broken Union” explores the vulnerability of love and its hurtful nature through natural elements.
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