Evening - Stephen Lubega

Never has the death of a poet 

Been tolled by all the world,

God’s work on earth, though,

Has its universal funeral in the west, 

Recurrent grave of day’s mighty soul.

Never was a victory so trumpeted,

As that of the sun climbing his fiery way 

And then in gorgeous colours falling, 

Trailing stars.

Life and death, water and aridity 

Bow to his passing ray.

With his passing death stirs in the thicket. 

In church the bell is tolled.

In barracks at the last bugle note,

Soldiers like ants file.

The busy woman scolds her child, 

Drunkards like sick dogs retch homewards, 

The night voice is a harsh guitar.

But on the hill among the musizi trees 

Sweet nuns sing litanies,

Of that virgin whose Son we know.

Priests like lamp-posts in a graveyard, 

Stoop over the breviary.

There’s a piping of crickets in the bush, 

And a bellowing of frogs—

All sing the ancient elegy

For the sun that has died in the West.

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Stephen Lubega (20th century) Uganda

Source: Poems from East Africa, ed. David Cook and David Rubadiri, East African Edicational Publishers, 1971