Independence Monument
Joy cry joy
for the miracle of motherhood
the magnificent build-up
of a fluid force
to unfold a bloom
that bewilders eternity
cry joy cry
for the breaking free
this flower
of inexplicable beauty
a fury on the air
of colour and song
a fragility of tissues
that roars and roars
with the single exclamation
of being
this concept
this epiphany
at full term
this breath, delivered
the very nucleus of the sun
is in its muscles
and in its blood
the beat of the rain
on the face of this child
is the exhilaration
of lungs that work
the steady focus
of eyes that see
and in its heart
one joy, one truth
of nationhood.
*
Who is your mother,
child? Who has borne you
age after age
to birth? Do not say
thistribethattribe
I am not Luo I am not Bantu
Who am I?
Mother you are the past
you hold me up to the heavens
but you are always behind me
I cannot turn in your direction
Fool child listen to your mother
age after age
I have borne the world on
do you think on the planet
there is a single grassblade of a person
that did not spring from a mother
Who is your mother,
child? Tell me, tell yourself
before it is too late.
Mother you are the past
and the future also
the ground of creation
from which all grassblades spring
every day I shall open a door in my mind
to a room that is sacred to you
every day I shall remember –
Fool child do not throw your arms about
and call me holy
I am nothing spe– Mother mother I know it
I can say it
you are Hope.
*
Will these shackles
that still cling to the body
fall from the mind in time?
The Arabs the British
the Imperial East Africa Company
the Mutesa kings
caught in a trap
and the river-spirit of the Nile
dallying so prettily
with the smiling war-cherub of the West
these loops these chains
that half-cripple the body
Amin’s craziness
Obote’s craftiness
– is the crested crane
to carry a question-mark? –
Museveni and Besigye
go to war over a girl –
Homer spoke true –
so the dark deeds of history
compel untold suffering. . .
but now, but now
after a half-century
of hurt and hell
of hate, civil war
and the hand of Aids
laid on each family –
can it be now
that the most beautiful
and poised of birds
makes good its promise
in one country’s name?
*
Speak Uganda.
Speak to the world.
The inexpressible strength
of mother and child
is in your gift.
The saving grace
of a true dialogue
between new and older
is at your door.
There is a lull in the fighting.
The institutions are strong.
Uganda, can it be
that a young child
held aloft by its mother
can signal a new state
at large, in the blundering world?
A flag of fifty years
raised high, beyond a crossroads
of doubt, above the byways
and backtracking journeys
of lands that have lost their freshness –
as it flutters in the wind,
can it declare
a message, an energy
fit for the future?
Behind the crested crane
at the flag’s centre
unseen – as unseen
at the centre of all flags –
the arms of a small child
raised high, speak, speak
to the ends of the Earth.
