One Life One Death Poem by Sekyewa Godfrey

One Life One Death.

Elly Tumwine,
Oh my fallen General.
The Bulldog of the Pearl of Africa,
You who shot first at Kabamba military base,
To save the nation from the tyrannical Amin.
On this day you succumb
To the siren call of the wilderness,
Wooed by the long claws of death.

In your casket you lie motionless,
Void of speech from your enslaved mouth,
Unable to sing a revolutionary lullaby.
That which you sang in the bush,
Now vanished in your breast without trace.
Lulled into a false state of sleep,
In a mortal coil to the way of all flesh.
The somber mornings now recede fainter.

Be not proud you death.
For our hearts are imbued with interminable hope,
Our mouths shall open to a dauntless hymn,
Our feet shall trample hell's perpetual fires,
With a twenty four gun salute at burial time.
(Sekyewa Godfrey)