Real Poetry: a Thomas Bvuma poem on Zimbabwe independence day

The real poetry
Was carved across centuries
Of chains and whips
It was written in the red streams
Resisting the violence of
'Effective occupation'
It was engraved in killings in Katanga
In the betrayals of Mau-Mau
In countless anti-people coups
Its beat was bones in Bissau
Its metaphors massacres in Mozambique
Its alliteration agony in Angola
Its form and zenith
Fighting in Zimbabwe
The real poetry
Is sweat scouring down
The backed valley of the peasant's back
Down to the starved gorge of his buttocks
It bubbles and boils
In the blisters of the farm labourer
It glides in the greased hands
Of the factory worker
Not a private paradise
Nor an individual inferno
But the pain and pleasure
Of people in struggle.

(Thomas Bvuma 'The real poetry')