Ahead of Major Maxwell Mahama’s burial tomorrow, Ghanaian poet-Kwame Agyemang Berko has recorded a touching poem in his honour–capturing the viciousness of the events surrounding his death.

It’s painful to listen to–but so true.

Below is the poem (hit play below)

Whist, He Has Died.

Whist, now that they have killed him,
Let us all hum a befitting hymn,
Strum doleful chords inspired by their caprices and 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

By Kwame Agyemang Berko