Not forgetting the burden others carry is our moral imperative

When the memory of hardship is consciously kept alive even when one has stepped into a more comfortable life, it becomes an act of solidarity

- Rethabile Masilo

In Chenjerai Hove's poem You Will Forget, the voice confronts us with a blunt and unsettling warning that, when we rise from hardship into comfort, when we shift from deprivation to privilege, we enter the danger of forgetting the weight borne by others.

The speaker declares that “you will forget the weight of a water pot / on the bald head of the village woman”.

This image is both literal and symbolical, of course. It evokes the physical endurance of countless rural women, and also warns of a kind of moral forgetfulness that creeps in once one has escaped such a world. To forget the water pot is not simply to forget an object - it is to erase a way of life, a shared history of survival.

Throughout the poem, the admonition insists that forgetting is not harmless, as in “you will forget the sinewy neck / that carries three bundles of thatch grass”, by which he is reminding us of the persistence of effort, of lives defined by carrying, lifting and bending under burdens.

The description is not romantic; it is stark, fibrous and dense. The lines press upon us the reality of labour that enables continuity - thatch for shelter, water for life, and so on. If we move into comfort and do not remember the effort, we risk disconnecting from the very foundations of our humanity.

I'd like to insist that the poem's voice distinctly implies nonphysical hardship and is a metaphorical warning not to be so comfortable in your boots that you forget what it is to walk barefoot in winter, which doesn't exclude the suggestion of helping those who are less fortunate.