WAR POEMS

By

Charles Mwewa

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            Tragic Song

The vile wars of Banguanaland:
Let me lament for the beloved
And compose a dirge to her plot.

My beloved has a spacious land
Sited between two great waters
Of Indian and Atlantic seas.

She dug it up and cleared out stones
And planted therein dire landmines;
She built a loom and secured it.

She dug around mass shallow graves.
Expecting to bring on power,
But alas, it brought gushing blood.

Dear kindred of civilized worlds
From Cape, to Freetown, to Khartoum,
From London to New York and past:

Did you observe the kid soldiers
Who are forced to drink human blood
And are strained to eat human fresh?

Wambo is factory to limbs;
My beloved’s airs are polluted
With gases of ruinous rockets.

Who makes such planes in such plenty?
In whose interest are they shaped?
And who fashion rifles en mass?

Wars fought on my beloved’s top soil
Have tainted its fertility
And rendered its earth impotent.

They die unceremoniously
And are buried without prayer
An offence to God, their Creator.

Refugee camps stripe my beloved
Just like the skin of a leopard
And the world believes it is free!

Poverty, like locusts, invades,
Ballots are nothing but a ruse
While laws only favour the rich!

The nations fob watch from a mile
And monitor as man kills man
And thinks it will never haunt them!

People in Banguanaland bawl:
Guiltless children worriedly howl,
But do you hear their hopeless roar?

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                War Sonnet


The gruesome visage of colorless war
And every time it stares its gape of woe
Into the fragile lives of the mortals,
It erodes a million hopes in totals
And render numerous desires devoid.
In gloom man reaps what he tend to avoid,
And in vain he gathers the world to moot
But always overlook war’s evil root.
Is it not due to his queer lust and greed,
Of which he has forever vowed to breed
That the scarlet fluid of the innocent
Has flown into a sacrilegious waste?
The joy of life is damped hundred percent;
For gory wars instill in man the worst!

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               Rwanda

Rwanda, the core of Africa
Inserted between giant nations
What, shall I recount your sad fate?
The doom of oval-shaped people,
A society of ocean smiles!

Genocide, legacy of war:
A story I must tell with tears,
Rwanda, we will never forget,
We will never remain silent;
We won’t deny you compassion!

You are now home to infamy,
Your survivors will not forget
The middle of the silent night
Which turned into an awry sight
Of the bloody massacre spree!

Rwanda, trees mature in straight lines,
Character of serenity
And outlook in tranquility,
But your citizens you murder
Hutus and Tutsis, you butcher!

Oh, horror, cry sacrilegious!
The unspeakable has happened,
Woe to the angel of dark Hades;
A strong nation you break apart
Just because their noses are different!

Rwanda, all innocently slain,
Your tragedy, is disaster,
A flaw in human decency,
A crime against humanity,
And error in human judgment!

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