Dr Najjuka Solome works at Jinja Philosophy centre (PHOTO/Courtesy)
The throbbing of our Ugandan heart paces down, our national chest heaves and weighs tones of grief.
Strands of dark clouds hang around our African sun and it bids the moon an endless good night,
Sleep moon, sleep sun, let the bare skies speak of our emptiness, the shivers of terror that pervade us,
The grass blades cry tears of commiseration and the endless pain and shock of the deaths well beholden,
May the somber sound of the Arupepe and the screeching fiddle announce this mourning tide herein,
Mourn fellow blood sisters, brothers of Uganda, feel the wound, the chasm gaping in our national flesh,
See, their cold butchering hands pinned unto their heinous hearts visit another heathen deed on us,
Hear all the mourning dancers throng the alleys and dusty roads, what calamity befalls this pearly land!!
Our budding Roses! Cry out loud Uganda! Let the African drum beat dispel the rhythm of our sobbing.
The Nile has no force to push its waters upward its course, the Victoria restrains from tossing its waves,
Still and stiff, agitating, swelling up with all our fears and tears, these young lives we mourn so deeply,
Cry bird of the night, hoot your heart out for we have lost all, from the Kasese front we sink in delusion.
All tree leaves fun our pains anew, imagining the death of our saplings, so young so gone! lo, Lhubiriha!
Pull back the dawn that exposed this gloom day, silence the song of the morning birds, hush the crickets,
The ravens must not land, weaverbirds shall not weave, let the crows show up in their black doom suits,
Let all monkeys tie a knot of their tails, for all stands still as we join pained mothers and fathers, wreath,
Let your hearts wrap round this day sons and daughters of our land, Lhubiriha floods in tears and wails!
The milk goes sour, the roadside markets are bare, pile up the rackety taxis downtown, stop the touting,
Close all meetings for this hanging dew wets us through in this single wretched deed. Cry children cry,
Let us mourn together and touch the innate power of healing within, even with thimbles of hope,
We so experience our storm, mothers and fathers sorrowing, the Rwenzori patting our backs to sooth,
Yet still, We now look upward in hope our dirges sung, from where our solace springs,
Laying our future in his hands, we clean our crowded lives of emotions and cede the despair,
Our young ones now sit in peace plenteous; we, standing of firm ground they hear us pray,
Angels so young, reaching out to our hands raised to them in hope and faith, fixing their cherubic gaze
A nation with a plentitude of love for them, this forward momentum remains our only way, Dear ones,
we bid you farewell, and thank you for your youthfulness that made us be. A land oft-graced.
You lent us your lives and smiles for this short while, that we, for the longer remember our Angels so!!
Dr Sr Solome Najjuka
Philosophy Centre Jinja
0783539446
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