Whist, He Has Died.

Whist, now that they have killed him,

Let us all hum a befitting hymn,

And Strum doleful chords inspired by their whim.

For his passing lowers our lights into a dim.

And shatters our hopes of soaring with a beam.

But we must at some point have to concede

That he is dead and so must proceed.

With the tenacity and crawlings of a millipede.


Whist, that they have killed the good man,

Orphaned his kids and widowed his woman,

Is nothing short of cowardice and inhuman.

Worse, they did him because they can.

But the sufferings we proffer in the stead of the man

Must serve as foundations of all we can

So his slaying shall not like a flash in a pan,

Further deepen our woes like it enjoyed a tan.


Whist, we all must be worried

By the manner in which his slay was hurried,

Plus how his dignities were tossed and parried

Like our humanities have been binned and buried

Like our fate as doomed must be carried

With the temper of a savaged people, dummied.


Whist, we must bow our heads in shame.

Weep for how bad we are saddled with pain.

Seethe at our ill-gotten fame.

And hope to unravel what we stand to gain.

For these times are terribly dire and insane

But so is his story, dismembered like a broken fountain,

So here we are, left with his pieces, to ordain

With a couple of shots and wreaths to confirm our disdain.

#StillWeRise


(Kwame Agyemang Berko is a poet, essayist and playwright)