His pendulous body tolled
its own death knell from the rope
yet refused obstinately
to die, clinging desperately
to the last thread
of his condemned life.
That morning, oh!
his body sang until it could not
stand its own song;
like a guitar it hummed
and they could not but listen, stunned.
Every part of his body
opened its mouth and sang
death songs, Orphic heart songs,
shrill and sweet pent-up
songs of freedom, or sad and solemn
as the national anthem.
The heartstrings raised their harp
in a flood of insistent rhythm
and a slow drumming dance:
All his blood stood up and sang,
twisting towards the throat.
All the silent mouths raised their voices
and cried out their chorus.
No one could gag, or stop the prison
walls from singing;
No one could muzzle, or shield the ringing
echoes of Zomba mountain.
And the whispering pines on Queen’s Point,
witnesses to the sordid deed,
raised their frosty mourning.
His heart was a cube of golden light,
a nest of incense where weaver-
birds had made their welcome permanent,
weaving a wall of thin silken tears
that sang with the lips of broken earth,
rolled waves, resistant and durable wind.
From every pore on his body a river of song,
or wail sprang and poured out.
His feet opened out like dark petals and chirped;
his fingers bloomed and plucked his heartstrings.
The song twined into the makako and jammed it
the looped noose would not close, numbed.
Being political, he was not entitled
to the miraculous luck of the criminals.
So they called in the prison doctor
to administer the coup de grâce.
He stabbed the chest with a thick
syringe and pumped the poison
into the heart with orgasmic release.
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