Bernard Gabriel Okurut

Tomb of the living dead

 

\'\'Through me you enter the city of woe

Through me you pass into eternal pain

Through me among the people lost aye,

ALL HOPE ABANDON YE WHO ENTER HERE\'\'

 

Dark black streets flood with yellow pus,

Red-hot blood drips down the stinking walls.

A wounded kob speeds past a starving crestfallen crane,

A cloud of dust........

Tattered drums, coughing children and rotting grain,

Footprints of the best dancer who never leaves the stage.

Kakoma cries to God, 

\'\'we lay the future in thy hands\'\'.

 

Fat swine swim downstream the Nile

Belching, grunting and making love.

Piglets and mole-rats drag the book of laws

Deep down the tomb of the living dead,

A place where the just are condemned.

 

The serpent seats on his golden throne

\'\'for Satan and my country\'\'   

His disciples patriotically sing.

He pronounces  judgement upon the saints

And crosses their names out of the book of life.

Death is the price they pay,

For virtue in this country is a great sin

And the wage of such a sin is death. 

 

The ground is dry and barren,

Crops no longer yield any fruit.

Guns and ammunition have taken the place of food,

More weapons instead of hospitals and schools!

Arrest warrants and birth control pills,

For us who raise not our thumbs

And on our faces, bare not the yellow mark of the beast!