Written piece
The Sudden Rain
Chitungue Machai
Mozambique
About this piece
This is a poem that I wrote during the january floods in Mozambique. I wrote a week after to be exact. It speaks to a reality many families live in Mozambique, but the beauty is that everyone of them has a different twist, and this one has its own.
The rain is raining inside too.
They’re like ants in an ant-hill,
Distressed and worried to hell
About furniture as if it were food.
As if they're winter provisions;
As if they're at all important;
As if they couldn't live on without them.
Three persons are moving,
Never stopping,
As the rain keeps on dropping;
As it keeps wetting their windows;
As it creates puddles on a ground
That was dry only minutes ago.
Three persons are gathering rags,
Buckets and everything to suppress
Something so natural, so beautiful
As the sky crying –
Maybe out of happiness,
Sadness or whatever,
It doesn't matter.
Three persons are cursing the rain,
(The same rain that gives life
To crops of food worldwide),
Just because their house
Let's it rain inside too.
One of them –
The woman,
The mother,
The director,
Stops to complain
While directing
The others to move
The furniture
As if it were a setting.
The first man –
Her first son,
The oldest,
The thinnest,
Who moves rapidly
Through the set,
Silently and sadly
Resents the father –
The absent producer.
The second man –
The second
And last son,
The youngest,
The fat one,
The scoundrel,
Moves aimlessly
Like an intern
As if it is his first
Day on the set.
The mother
Is the director
Of this feature,
While the father
Is not only the producer,
But the writer
Of this sad plot too.
The director –
The mother –
Works diligently
With no advisor,
Executive,
Or casting agent
To help her.
And that's what
Always happens
When it rains.
At least in their house.