Beasts of Nalunga VI Poem by Jack Mapanje

And when riddlers call
beasts of Nalanga spirits
of the innocent that our
hit squads ‘accidentalised'
once, now seeking peace
for their mangled bodies
with today's dispensation;
when our narrators today
poets tomorrow remember
to restore the victims of
beasts of Nalunga to their
rightful pages in the nation's
history, let these and other
singers craft the truths we
were silent about for fear of
death; maybe it's right that
a few riddlers remember
the ad hoc mat-coffins that
took some mangled bodies
past ordinary doors, when
they should have gone out
to their impromptu graves
past windows, according to
the tattoos from the medicine
men and women who gave
them new lease of life; may-
be the singers are duty-bound
to remember the coffins that
should not have been buried
at gun point, or carcasses of
the ‘politicals' who did not
deserve to dissolve in basins
of surphuric acid at Malawi
Young Pioneer bases, when
it was a crime to shed tears
for family branded ‘rebels'.