A Rage Letter From The Woods Poem by KYOMUHENDO ATEENYI

For how long shall that kingdom blare out its moans
To the scarthing energies of your fury
To the waxed ears of you raping man?

The beautiful leopard can no longer hop to and fro
In the stare of the gently husking trees
Whose song, that beautiful song,
accompaned by the wooing hisses of the wind
Is the delight of the fauna.

The Lion, the mighty king of the jungle
Can no longer rumble
Like the Emperor at his court,
For into ashes his court has been tuned.
Where shall be left to execise his supremacy from?
The motherland is lying naked, yes naked,
At your hands you raping man.
Don't you in the slightest realise that you have now torn assunder her green robe,
That has covered her since the dawn of time?

When the highest heavens split open
Him with a heart of Gold and a shaft of Bronze was born.
Thus was the coming of Omukama CWA II KABALEEGA
The conquerer of conquerers.
But You beloved black brother
Of shot memory,
Should you also forget
That it was his alliance with the mighty Budongo*
That the tunes to the speardance
Of the Ekya Nyangire Resistance
Was birthed
And was later to resound across the plains like the angriest thunderbolt?
Was it not from that green sacred arch
That the fathers of your fathers
Plunged hard into the White Man's liver
The avenging spear of the motherland?

Yes bats roam in the dark and enjoy
But we are humans not bats!
Why should we take after these small mammals
And not envision a day when the children of our children's children shall ask your children's children
Questions like 'Father, how did a tree look like? '!

The rapist is on rampage
The sow is screeming
Its chains are rattling
And timber trucks are groaning.
Mutilated corpses of trees that have overwhelmed a millenia block your next stride
Like carcasses of speared rhinos in a remote hunting field!

The hope and promise of the magnanimous flora
That has incarnated man's mortal aspirations
And so lovingly seen him through the stages of his growth
Is at stake and uncertain
Like the pride of an impotent Bull
In the stare of wanting cows!

Foward to save the green
Forward to save the wild
And then Pamberi ne chimurenga...

2007