Poem: A dirge for October 17

Saidu Bangura, Praia,

October 17, 2022.

A Dirge for October 17

How painful! How devastating! What more can I say?

“Thou shall not speak”, a voice thundered behind me!

I am prohibited from commenting. I have been silenced.

It is October 17, a day we shall set aside to remember

How autocracy replaces democracy and humanity

How the callousness of “a system” enjoys bloodbath

How burials of their massacres become unceremonious –

Painful reminders of those eliminated for their rights.

How relatives grieve without a final adieu to loved ones

Knowing your loved one was killed at home, not protesting.

Knowing your loved one was killed at Station Road,

Not on August 10, running for dear life, shot at the back,

Not protesting – protest, the new crime in our dear land.

And relatives are stationed in a corner not to say goodbye

As their loved ones are dumped, not buried, like nobodies,

Their loved ones shot for protesting, a right in a democracy

Not knowing they were in an autocracy with “unity, freedom,

and justice” as our national motto – all buried on October 17.

August 18 like August 10 met at Station Road on August 14

To discuss July 17 in Makeni and April 29 at Pademba Prisons,

Not on correctional matters but about “a system” that kills en masse

Openly and in the dark – how protesters and non-protesters alike

Once called insurrectionists, terrorists, self-serving, unscrupulous

Sierra Leoneans were put into coffins said to contain their remains

And thrown into graves ignoring the angst of relatives to say adieu –

How the 27 coffins remind us of 29 others of December 29 brutally

Dispatched – how the logic of what happens today becomes illogical –

How October 17 reminds us of – Pademba, Tombo, Lunsar, Makeni,

Tonkoh Limba, nameless other places – the inhumanity of a regime.

Dr Saidu Bangura is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cape Verde. He lectures in the English Studies Course, Faculty of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, University of Cape Verde. He holds a BA, English & Linguistics (FBC, USL); PhD in Translation, Communication, and Culture with a specialty in English Linguistics (University of Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain).