\n(Excerpts from the forthcoming collection, \u201cEchoes from the Hills\u201d)<\/p>\n
In your darkest cloudy nights
\nI look across your many hills
\nThis City of a million lights
\nNatural and manmade incandescence.
\nPerched on one of your hilltop dwellings
\nI seek to enter the depths of your soul
\nHeartbeats and heartaches echoing
\nDeep from your soul\u2019s unceasing insomnia.
\nIs your soul like your many lights giving
\nSo little away about the struggles of the day?
\nThe deep sighs and suppressed laughs of the many
\nAwake and alive in the past and present of this land?
\nDo you shine and blink in relative reticence
\nYour inner tales of joys, gains and pains?
\nThe neglect and regrets you suffered inscrutably carved
\nIn faces igniting a thousand fires across these hills
\nWhose burning brand their questions into our hearts.<\/p>\n
humanity in choreographed droves
\narrive from homes in hills and slopes
\nto thrive in urban landscapes anew
\nknitting threads of steely insistence
\nbark clothes of defiant resilience
\nthat smother the anxieties of daily life
\nas they lean in on hope\u2019s threshold at dawn
\nspun by fate, reworked each day by the governed
\nand governors who trumpet dogged willpower
\nundying spirit spinning a tapestry of life
\nin a making, unmaking and remaking of self,
\n people, places and land beyond collective grief.<\/p>\n
somehow, we survive
\nadapt, thrive beyond malice,
\ndefined expectations of imagined
\nboundaries, fences, imposed limits
\nthat our ancestors dared not transcend.
\nlike them our thick skins absorbed pain,
\nsuffering, trials, tribulations, homes bulldozed
\nthe often imperial removal of presence as stain
\non the face of dreams of glitter, profit and beauty.<\/p>\n
we remain the children and heirs cleansing
\nthe wealth found in forefathers\u2019 stories
\nthat today recite our Creation\u2019s lore
\nacross boundaries, tongues, bodies, spaces,
\nmaps that our parents not often amused
\ndrew in opportunity and hope in open tales
\nand conversations that they planted and nurtured.<\/p>\n
willpower, fragile human eggshell
\ncrest of a conceited faith in the self.
\ntwin of feckless human condition
\nwhy often do you fool me?
\nwhy often do you fail me?
\nmy proud self you drop in pits,
\nmy boasts and swagger held in trust
\nbejewelled, crowned and enthroned
\n in my heart you reveal as mere dust,
\nfailures from life storms\u2019 unmooring our
\nmanhood anchors, patriarchal certainties.<\/p>\n
when rainclouds
\ntheir showery hands clap
\nin Africa\u2019s famed City of hills
\nunder mid-Equator\u2019s Rift heat
\nin swirls of rain-scented dust
\nthunderstorms that growl
\nswarms of harried winds that howl
\nscattering never-covered crowds into
\nshelters under tropical almond and guava trees,
\nshop fronts, bus shelters and roast corn sellers\u2019 sheds.
\njoyful school children dance to the music of the rains
\nin wet uniforms welcoming the heralded plenty,
\nthe harvests\u2019 bounty nudging farmers, teachers and others
\nto praise the Deities we know in our special \u201cAmen\u201d
\nthat demean not the mystery in our songs, dance
\nand trance that welcome the promise of the rains
\neven as we grit our furrows, not always as
\noutsiders think in sorrows, but more
\nin ecstasy and agony of renewed life.<\/p>\n
smiles
\nthat call us
\nto follow one
\nfollow none
\nfollow some
\nfollow all whose
\ncares and cries in pain
\nflow into the joyful
\nplains of love and anger
\noften muted but overflowing
\npains, smothered in memory renewed
\ntold by the many who lived the season
\nof unexpected, undeserved deaths.
\nthe ones loved, the not so loved
\neaten by gods whose fury , fear,
\nduplicity, dreadful steely cruelty
\nno ancestor on their own ever wish.
\nchildren of the old fall
\nchildren of the renewed call.
\nbearer of smiles that teach us
\nnever again to genocide
\nto cruelty, tyranny and injustice.<\/p>\n
this earth of ours
\nonce vilified, desecrated, abused
\ndeep down to its very innards.
\nshrubs, woods, waters, earth ashen, silted,
\nto its enduring life on my knees I bend,
\nears pressed close to the ground
\nwitness to echoes from beyond.
\nthis soil of ours
\nwet with blood still fresh in memory
\nthough stale with time, broken bones,
\nbroken hearts, innocent souls betrayed,
\nmisled in seasons when demons in daylight
\nrampaged the communal lands in trails of horror,
\nbearing stench that drench our valleys and hills.<\/p>\n
these hills of ours
\nblowing freezing winds that goose bumps
\netch on our already wounded beings
\nchills that refuse to leave us, never left us.
\nalive in our minds and deeds, in history and the present
\ncold memories of decades carved in our lives, our
\ngraves, chills that chorus our Kigali highs and lows.<\/p>\n
if there\u2019s a truth, an illusion
\nin every reality known or unknown,
\nis that reality then a lie? or truths
\nand falsehoods are Siamese twins
\nthat who and how we are define,
\nwhere we are and what we are, inscribe.
\nwhen then is our truth the only
\nand absolute truth? our lies the sole
\nindubitable statements of false belief?
\nwhere is the truth in anybody else
\nwhose certainty, veracity, we so blindly trust?
\ndoes it really matter then and to whom
\nthat our reality is littered with lies,
\nmake-belief, half-truths, contrived delusions?<\/p>\n
they amputated
\nthe lids of our eyes.
\nwe, permanent watch of night and day
\nfirst respondents at the accursed gate
\nof the terrain of all who hope have lost.
\ndenied of sleep, perpetual daylight host
\nconsolation for our beleaguered nations.<\/p>\n
we sleep
\nin perpetual glare
\nof unshuttered lights, snare
\nthat traps our zombie lives.
\nnoise from deep stomach snores
\nbelaboured breathing, glazed eyes
\nthat neither shine light nor mores.<\/p>\n
Listen to the winds
\nwind its way between cracks in hills,
\nwood paths, in blasts of memories
\ntears and laughter of love and despair
\nfor many who loved , lived and died here.<\/p>\n
Listen to the winds
\nblast its screams to sweep
\nthe black volcanic earth of this land
\ndrenched with the blood from skulls
\nfor reasons unknown to one and all.<\/p>\n
Listen to the winds
\nhose and vacuum the grieving
\nlodged deep in the inner crevices
\nof once broken spirits locked in
\nthe demons of collective nightmares.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Excerpts from the forthcoming collection, \u201cEchoes from the Hills\u201d) 1.The Lights of Kigali In your darkest cloudy nights I look across your many hills This City of a million lights Natural and manmade incandescence. Perched on one of your hilltop dwellings I seek to enter the depths of your soul Heartbeats and heartaches echoing Deep from your soul\u2019s unceasing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5208,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions\/5208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}