Roland E.T Mhasvi The Flowers of Yesterday. An Anthology of Poems

ECHOES

The rocks slumbered everywhere in snoring heaps-
Yet some were mounted high under the vaulting skies
in vulgar piles that mocked creation,
Whilst their off-spring broke off rubbling foetuses
And romped down the slopes amidst the swirling dust.

Across the wasting blastlands lightning cracked-
Flamed the skies in the throbbing scars of pain
As sodden clouds slugged wearily overhead
And,arching, writhed in the retching act of old
Whilst down below the rocking masses slept through the slush.

As the whirlwinds trailed the tracks across the lands,
And everywhere rose the dust as from the dead,
And the plains stole away in a choking shroud,
I stared at the grim skeletal remains that everywhere lay-
The shattered bones of our returning ghosts.

Oh! for a trumped-voice Messiah upon a mountain-
To crack his horn in echoing calls all across the land,
To shriek his horn in echoing calls across the land,
To shriek his cure into statured stone-deaf ears,
To gather all the shattered fragments together again
And make them whole under a healing spread of warm soil

My rantings rankles across the rock-strewn waste.
I sit here in this little dell, hard by gleaming streams
That flush down the fairways of my cheeks:
But even they stumble over the rocks of my age,
And, i know, already i begin to crumble at my feet.