The Wife Of My Husband Poem by Sammy Aswani Luyove

The Wife of My Husband
By Sammy Aswani

Adamba,
You sob every night
And wash your face in tears,
Because your husband is my husband:
First it was you,
Then I came in fresh, a dainty!
A bubbling boom of an African woman,
Built in a rolling landscape that bewitched your man,
A new broom to sweep clean
Your own self-dented mien.
So we share the cooking stick
From which our children are bred!
Yet when he brings home to us an antelope,
After a daylong toil and chase of the antelope
He first gives to you the hind thighs of the antelope
And then gives to me the front legs of the antelope;
But when I cook from my pot, my meat softens
And my simple soup soaks his beards
But your bolted broth does not!
So you claim my pot is smeared with charms
Deadly charms that I spew in the air as I cook
To confuse the whirl wind that blows
The sweet aroma from your pot into mine!
So our husband is confused,
And the wife of my husband is restless.

Adamba!
They called you Adamba, a sufferer:
And you know as my elder,
That the names our people don't fall far
From the content of our character,
Yet now you claim I have made you suffer,
Because I am the wife of your husband:
A busband snatcher!
Shihutsutsu; the willy whirl winds
That blows away anything it finds
By the deadly juju of the Baseretse -
My clans' men, the cleansed ones!
Oh! tAdamba. the wife of my husband!

Adamba!
You got married to my husband first
When I was only twelve, so you know him more:
But, I will wash my pot clean in readness of an antelope
And keep clean and iron my garments
And dry them under the scented leaves of miyoma
And sweeten the smell of my house with the aroma
And take his children to school to learn something else
To give your husband fame,
And not juju that will bind and blind him from you,
That Adamba may lose her husband
Oh! Adamba!
The wife of my husband!