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Memorial and Shape of An Epitaph

by Lillian Akampurira Aujo
16 December 2024

Memorial 

 

Sacred to the memory of Harry St. George Galt, Acting Sub-Commissioner of the Western province who was murdered at Ibanda on 19th of May in 1905 by a native of Ankole. This cross has been erected by the direction of His Excellency H. Hesketh – Bell CML H.M. Governor of Uganda as a memorial to an excellent and deeply regretted officer 1908. 

 

Bwana, your ghost is the sing of whips in my kin’s memory   you incised my throat like you were bleeding a goat    you hewed out chunks of me    and rock upon rock    rifle like a second hand    you made them build you a pyramid   like we needed to remember you   like we would forget the way home if the road did not bear your name    like we would forget the stain of your footprint   the whoosh of your whip    how could we forget you    when death licked lips at the sound of your footfall 

     

when my kin shrunk themselves    to stow their bodies in granaries    the days you charged in collecting your colonial tax    & the millet that fed them became the sand that dislodged air from their lungs    as they squatted still and submerged in baskets of grain    waiting for you to move on to the next yard  

 

yet you always stayed too long 

 

like you knew the men and muscled boys    were clogged with their own tongues    & their spines were cracking    yielding to the confine of space    bent to your reign    I will always remember    how you stood there counting the smoke rings from your pipe    like each was a minute in the countdown    as their sinews slackened    and lost grip of their bodies. 

 


 

Shape of An Epitaph 

landmarks shift/become unfixed — Kei Miller 

  

Your real epitaph was not the words they wrote on your grave. 

 

it  

was 

in  the shape 

of something  

that grew into a pyramid 

where you died. each stone 

a stone that belonged to a hill. 

each stone a body that once had air. 

each stone a scar-less skin. each stone 

a shard of the land you pocketed. each  

stone a name you swallowed. each stone a wound 

 each stone a god you drowned. each stone would not hold, later  

the grass would grow but we would still remember because we took back the stones to build our houses. we stacked the rooms with pots, spears, gourds, beads, raffia baskets, shells, calabashes, moonstones, umbilical cords of our children, anything that felt like us, and convinced us we were forgetting you. 

Illustrator © Rohini Mani

About the Author

Lillian Akampurira Aujo

Lillian Akampurira Aujo is a writer from Uganda. She emerged a commended poet for the UK James Berry Poetry Prize 2024. She is the recipient of the Jalada Prize for Literature. Her writing has been/is published by adda, HarperVia, New Internationalist, Prairie Schooner, Transition Magazine, among others. She was a Global Voices Scholar at University […]

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