The Dead Cannot Talk

By Francis Chuma

Your body was laid to rest the other day
We interred your remains:
The clothes you wore
Your shoes, the wrist watch
Still sticking to tell us endlessly
The changing of the seasons
The signs of the times

We buried your football skills
But we failed to bury your soul.
Your spirit lives on
Your passion for the wellbeing of our nation
Your zeal to stop the decomposition of our freedom
No zikwanje can hack to death
No stiletto can pierce to oblivion
No blow can hurl into the void of non-existence

The morning we found you
After the cloak of night opened up to shed light on the truth
The lie on which you lay bore no marks
No signs to shore up the official explanation
They say you left farewell notes
Yet the deed is not keeping with the strength of your spirit

Your pursuit for the truth
Your inability to suffer in silence
Threatened to derail the construction of private palaces
Shook the foundation best laid plans to keep it in family
But the Truth does not die.

They find comfort in the fact that the dead cannot talk
Cannot dispute the authenticity of farewell notes
Cannot disclose the duress under which the notes were written
It is sad the dead cannot talk

There will be no closure in this death
No end to the mourning
Each morning on the long queues of fuel
We will mourn
Each time bogus salaries are splashed on spouses for charity work
We will mourn
Each time we find no medicine in hospitals
We will mourn
Each time they threaten a journalist with death
We will mourn
Each time they set ablaze the abode of an activist
We will mourn
Each time they raze the markets
We will mourn
Each time appointments are made from one ethnic group only
We will mourn

Go well Dear Friend
We will ignore the farewell notes
They have failed to kill your spirit
These idiots.

Published under The Sunday Times Column: Mouthpiece on October 2, 2011.