Even in the original poem it is a bit cryptic. It relates to the video, though, about three-quarters through, where the narcissists use normality to make their perversities believable. The more complete context of the poem is that whitewash was used a lot in the colony Marechera was born into. As a metaphor he throught everything was made to look more moral and pure than it was. Reality only becomes "believable" once it is made false -- that is, covered over in whitewash. (There is also some secondary implied commentary here about race and colonial culture.) The comment talks about power relations and covering up the truth, because most people will not believe direct psychological reality OR sordid political reality if it is explained to them. They just don't think such explanations are "realistic". Here is more of the politically critical cryptic poem: He lost his arms, his legs, his trunk All that remained was from the neck upwards Grinning sheepishly, apologetically He was a poem pared down to its essentials Grinning sheepishly, apologetically, honest! His father died in primary school His father rose again to run the factory Turning on his bicycle the axis of the moon Turning in his sleep, this endless sweep of stars Aphrodite sealed between two sides of the coin Is it your shrieks I hear when my gold jingles? Sword-bearing arm cleaves day’s placid leg I cannot bear all thought to food In the bucket is whitewash enough To make our world realistic “But you can’t love your sister that way!” In every dustbin, in every rubbish heap A teacher pleading innocence Pleading ignorance.

Sometimes help-seeking is legimately requested and my own requests were never deemed legitimate. I really had come from an entirely different country and set of social circumstances, and if I made any request on the basis of that I was dismissed as if I had been involved in a puerile activity of attention-seeking. I was fifteen and I needed a hell of a lot of adult guidance to adjust from a society that was in some ways equivalent to Europe in the late eighteenth century or earlier. Instead, I kept getting, "But you already know this. Stop drawing attention to yourself."

 Because of these put-downs, I eventually developed a tight band of tension along my throat so that I could not speak well, and I succumbed to chronic fatigue syndrome from the ongoing stress of trying to figure out everything on my own. It would be like if everyone else of your age had studied for an exam by taking similar classes for about fifteen years, but you hadn't, and you had to come in on the scene at a late stage and take the same exam under the same criteria as everybody else -- no leniency allowed for you! I think that perhaps due to the prevalance of narcissists in Western society, but ALSO due to the mindset of narcissism itself, which simply cannot take into account linear time (which means, cannot allow for the reality of history or indeed of other people having experienced radically different historical circumstances), people like me are summarily dismissed as whiners and 'bellyaching".