There seems to be no hope in the celebrated peace and security of the home. However, this results in the destruction of both bodies (‘Pyro’s Ode to Prufrock’). One would have thought that developing passionate relationships would provide an escape route. Faced with a crisis of hopelessness, the mind seeks (temporary?) refuge in drinking (‘A Full Glass’). Zimbabwe’s implosion at the national level has led to soul-searching at the individual level. In ‘Midlife Crisis’, Sasa expresses this sense of unrest, where time dissolves into the past, and the mind grapples with uncertainty and despair. Pain and confusion settle on the individual’s mind as hope is lost and the perception of crisis becomes a foreboding. But the sense of failure and disillusionment is not confined to a national level it is reflected deeply at a personal and family level, and the national crisis manifests in unfulfilled personal hope, dream and memory. The tragedy is both its downfall and the promise that it once held for its people. Given the derivation of Zimbabwe from ‘Dzimbabwe’, meaning, literally, “houses of stone”, it is clear that the poet is mourning the destruction of her country. The reader is left to feel the devastation through her vivid descriptions, “I walk through the ruins/of what once was a mighty fortress/ of stone.” (‘Myths and Legends’). With acute insight, the poet describes Zimbabwe’s fall from grace. There are no sacred cows and every effort is made to lay bare Zimbabwe’s paralysis. “Graveyards overflow, our country is in crisis
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