Looking for a Mate.

My people think I'm ripe,
Enough to render a woman pregnant,
So mother's mad, seething in pain--
Thirsty for grandchildren...

Behind my father's threshold thus,
A simba I erected,
Into the wild then plunged:
Hunting for a woman, to warm it,
For lukoba lufumila omukhasi; nokona enjala bubi!
[a home's praised because of a woman; sleeping hungry is bad].

I wander, here and there,
Among big women with big breasts;
And small women with small and skinny breasts,
They drill extra holes on their bodies,
And stuff them with gold, diamond and silver...

For a mate I'm looking,
Among black women with pink skins,
White women with darkest hearts,
She-goats with raptured manners--
They naked wander in daylight!
Could she be here?

Bakoki, men of my riika,
Ages have seen you here, catching termites,
Has a girl passed,
A bucketful of water on her head,
Or collapsing under a bundle of firewood?

The woman in sandles,
Head clean shaven like an inmate,
In a long dress like a nun,
And afraid like a new chicken,
Is the treasure I'm after.
Where do I find her?

Women of the city,
Women of class,
The girl you the other day despised,
That she grows backwards,
That her tender thighs haven't felt,
The luring insides of a miniskirt;
And can't walk without panties like you--
Perhaps for aeration...
Is my mate.
Which way did she go?

She whose palms have cracks,
And her ugly foot befits no ladies' shoe...
So you evade her most,
As though her ugly beauty is infectious,
And she hasn't studded her nipples, lips and clitoris...
Which way did she go?

My clansmen,
Across great rivers and ridges:
I've journeyed--
On long voyages,
Searching for the bearer of your lineage.

I have met women.
Some thrash men like children,
Some sit on them--
Treating them thus, like pets and puppets...
Some see men with their stomachs only,
And couldn't single out my mate!

Women of the market,
You who gossip, dawn to dusk,
Till vegetables rot, unsold;
And your poor men sleep on empty stomachs,
Have you seen a maiden herein?
Selling grapes,
Or visiting the mill...

Here I sit, weeping,
Thirsty for my pie.
Women come and go--
Their astounding breasts popping out dangerously,
As though about to fall!
Full and erect,
Empty and sagging...

Over their mountaineous buttocks,
My neck I crane,
To view the dark alleys of the world.
Could my mate be somewhere, there...
Stranded?
Lost?

I will look for her in the vineyard,
Perhaps she could be weeding millet.
I will look for her in the fangs of pythons,
She could have been abducted...
I will look for her in our Father's House,
She could be dining at the table of spirituality...

Starve me not, cowboys,
Did you say she ran into the bush?
To marry not a man with a thorny chest,
Whose aged hoe's blunt,
Thus would groan and pant, whilst deep inside...

I'll follow her, therein,
Perhaps a home we could start,
Sire a clan of bushmen--
Immune to fallacial seductions of modernity;
And far from the witchcraft and madness,
Of science and civilization.
(c) Wafula p'Khisa.