Drums of War

By Malama Katulwende

This is the first time that Malama Katulwende has exposed a huge collection of unpublished poetry to the public. His work is a stark reflection of his culture, history, and intellectual environments in which he has been able to create.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546293361

Malama Katulwende

Malama Katulwende (* 1967) - has published poems in the anthology "Under the African Skies - Poetry from Zambia" and the novel "Bitterness" (An African Novel from Zambia), for which he received the Julius Chongo Award 2006 for Best Creative Writing (at the Ngoma Awards ceremonies). He has also published more than forty articles for the website ukzambians.co.uk. Malama Katulwende was born in 1967 in the Luapula province of Zambia. He is the first-born child in a family of eight. He was educated in Catholic schools in order to become a Diocesan priest, but later decided to attend the University of Zambia. Malama Katulwende has taught science and mathematics at different schools, and he is an entrepreneur.

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© 2018 Malama Katulwende. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/04/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9337-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9336-1 (e)

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Contents

Acknowledgements

A Death

Yours is in a pot

Resolution of the artist

The Birth of Dismay

The Flight

Don’t Ever Die

A Cry For Freedom

The Fall of Rain

When the Shylock Pulls the Trigger

Only of Love

Your empty promise

Afterthought

Do Not Cry

Two Fragments

Steve Bantu Biko

We are Here

Letter and Contents

Footmarks

A Dirge (Icimbo ca ndosha)

Meditations

I am Afrika

Ichilubi

IT’S SO EMPTY HERE

Babenye

A Ray of Light

The Rain

The Stock Exchange:

FRIENDS FOR ETERNITY

For

Amukusana Mukelabai; Malama Kasuba; Mulako Kalunguti;

and Chisanshi Chipobe

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the Zambia Women Writers Association (ZAWA) for permission to reproduce two poems, "When the Skylock Pulls The Trigger" and "A Cry for Freedom" respectively, which first appeared in an anthology Under The African Skies: Poetry from Zambia in 2003.

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A Death

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1

Warm earth, O mother, mother,

Atop me;

Today reclaimed I

Back onto your bosom,

Today I resign

To the lullaby.

Far from me once you were;

This breath you have now cut

Was the thread between my life and you:

At last, with cruel knife,

At last,

Heart and tongue are cut and tied

To curtain off the place behind:

I am a traveler at the next station.

2

While we mourn for him whose

Vision was shepherded into the very end

Guilty shadows amongst here,

Ugly, laden with sucked human blood

Hurriedly twist, crouch and twist again

And dissolve into shadows themselves

And hide

Scraggy mourners roll over the ground;

The grim of loss on their lips,

Their faces

To the grave, -

As we mourn for him…

In the day streaks of light seeking them out

Lose them,

In the night darkness like fellow conspirator

Covers them

Themselves the dark

Swollen lips are parted, they tremble,

Eyes are red and heavy and threatening to burst,

Our voices hoarse with weeping as

Down

Down

We hoist him

Eyes heavier and redder

Down…down we bring him

Swollen lips now cry:

Kapwepwe, Kapwepwe,

Why have you?

And finally to the bottom,

That now he might rest in peace

3

They brought him in a plane

Like a hero back home;

And put him in a beautiful casket

Like shelter for his bones,

Yet we saw it shattered to dregs:

What dishonor is this?

He who is of the royal kraal

Will only lie in a cow skin

Inside the belly of an anthill.

And many were gathered

Uncovering his greatness.

Yet even before his mothers saw him in state

Bulldozers, the shadows,

Busy breaking his many works

And were throwing them aside;

For a man who wore a large mouth

Could not, like the shadows, stay in the dark

Unheard;

For he who rejected the self

Would find it difficult to secure a Swiss

Account,

Mused