Some hearts are seeded with quiet, they weigh the body down

by Tjawangwa Dema

and how they blossom is how daylight disappears.

Happen that all the good do is perch

and hope to alight

in some final place of understanding.

What good then our knowing

what is right and what unbecoming,

if it comes to save like a god.

Too late for any but the saints

to crow their own knowing –

how they kept the covenant

of distance from evil.

If knowing still brings us here

I come awake, my heart a flutter,

grin when the children turn with expectation

to the nothing grazing in summer’s field,

to start a small fire, now nuzzling wiregrass.

About the poet: Tjawangwa Dema is the author of two books of poetry, most recently The Careless Seamstress which won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry. A former Fall Resident at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program as well as a 2016 Visiting Artist at Northwestern University’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Tjawangwa is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol. Tjawangwa has given readings in countries including Brazil, India, South Africa, Singapore, Denmark, the USA and Germany. In addition to appearing in various journals and anthologies the author’s work has been translated into Spanish, German, Chinese and Swedish. Tjawangwa facilitates writing workshops globally and co-produces the Africa Writes literary festival in Bristol.