Poem

Tari Mtetwa

Side by side

Original language

Rock

Rock

Rock

I embrace rock
tightly sink
into the grace
of my breast’s softness
I overflow its silence
like a stream’s mellow flow
over stubborn boulders
my fleshly passions flood
its unyielding stillness
till my arms’ caress
sculpt it into form
persuades it into feeling
and in the perpetuity
of its solidity
and stoniness of its granite
unchanged by time
the self I’m losing etches deeply
a forever image
cast in rock

© 2011, Tari Mtetwa
Publisher: First published on PIW,

Tari Mtetwa

Tari Mtetwa

(Zimbabwe, 1982)

Tarisai Witness Mtetwa was born at St Augustine’s Mission near Mutare, and had a largely rural upbringing. He attended both primary and secondary school at St Augustine’s. Mtetwa began writing poetry at high school. “Even though I was not in a literature class,” he says, “I earnestly read all the books that fellow students were studying. I then developed an interest in literature, poetry in par...

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Poems of Tari Mtetwa

NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE A RIVER

First

Naked

GRAVE-DEEP WHISTLER

Rock

Here

WITHOUT-A-NAME

POTTER’S SONG

Outside

OLD SCHOOL JAM SESSION ON RADIO

Close

Rock

I embrace rock
tightly sink
into the grace
of my breast’s softness
I overflow its silence
like a stream’s mellow flow
over stubborn boulders
my fleshly passions flood
its unyielding stillness
till my arms’ caress
sculpt it into form
persuades it into feeling
and in the perpetuity
of its solidity
and stoniness of its granite
unchanged by time
the self I’m losing etches deeply
a forever image
cast in rock

Rock

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