ODE TO A YOUNG MAN (poem) - Chris Magadza - Zimbabwe

ODE TO A YOUNG MAN

Tread softly
On those wind-swept hills
Where sacred oracles
Of the cold winds of Nyangani
Whispered of a land
Beyond the deprivation;
Of a nation
Beyond the servitude.

Tread softly
Under those mango trees,
For in the shade
Of their learned boughs
His spirit solace
Seeketh yet.

Tread softly
On that ancient veranda.
His brooding, longing,
Lingers in the breeze, rifling
The empty yellow pages
Of unwritten history
And truths yet
To be untold.

Tread softly
Down that sandy footpath,
For there your Father,
Herbert Chitepo,
Left the first foot prints
Of the fated journey
To Zimbabwe.

Tread softly
At St Augustine’s,
Penhalonga.

Poet's Note: Kariba, 1989

‘Ode to a Young Man’ is a study of the son of Herbert Chitepo, on the
occasion of the 50th anniversary of St Augustine's School, where his
father, who masterminded the resistance war in Zimbabwe, was among the
first intake of black African secondary school pupils in what was then
Southern Rhodesia. He was assassinated in Lusaka. Soon after the writing
of this poem, the young man himself died tragically.