Somewhere a bullet pierces a woman,
beyond the reaped edges of her clan’s farmland.
She gets caught in a thicket whose thorns she does not feel,
Limp feet drag on to a tree whose name the woman does not know.
With the sun at her back,
Here breaks the charm for luck .
Off her neck are the fetishes
from the sacrificial white hen, herb and hallowed water
To the bosom of the waiting earth.
The woman slumps, face down-
Watching her life drain away
Now the stained soil seeps from her lips.
heavily the grain is still in the sack-
drawn to the feast a fly lands on her lips.
The light dips lower as the last sounds
mute in the darkness, still she droops lower
into a night without mourning.
About her who fell unceremoniously
One day somebody shall write;
No rock or wood marks the grave
of these bleached broad bones
Save for a clump of wild sorghum
hailing her lost name.
31/10/2007
This poem won third place in the first Annual Beverley Nambozo Poetry Prize, 2009.
