Gaborone Sun

Let’s give a thought

to the harshness of the sun of Gaborone

Gaborone sun may rise slowly

but when it hits

It hurls all to the nearest shade

The virulent Gaborone sun

addles the brains

of visitors and residents alike

Gaborone sun wakes all up

and interferes with all illusions

Gaborone sun melts hard-boiled politicos

and makes mayors fumble

poets fudge lines

birds churn out off-key tunes

census-people lose count

The vicious Gaborone sun

cancer-inducing and stern

makes sociologists misread scenes

and present smudgy pictures

of how people of Gaborone live

Unrelenting, the ferocious Gaborone sun

reaches smart enclaves and low cost areas

boosting lust in elderly people, stealing sobriety

sapping dash and making corruption

swell and pollute the frowning streets

The same sun of shoddy Gaborone

accesses classy zones of money-mad people

who cuddle the town’s biggest migraines

Gaborone sun turns up appetite for spicy gossip

in the backbiting circles of manicured fangs

The brutal and unruly Gaborone sun powers all

in a democratic way, the hooded robbers,

smart-aleck swindlers, retrenched smugglers

tipsy bag-snatchers and leaders

operating in the darkness of outworn beliefs

The sun of Gaborone checks resolve

challenges patience and snatches verve

electricity, its load-shedding baggage

and hefty bills come and go

but Gaborone sun, ardent as ever remains

In Gaborone writers exchange emails, addresses

and diffident glances

but the sun of Gaborone,

divisive in its majestic wisdom

hardly lets the connect

And we say something has to be done

as Gaborone teems with plans untried

Schemes shelved in dusty hope

as power-mongers run amok

provoking the judicious wrath of Gaborone sun

Tiro Sebina