The cracks cast vast valleys.
Sorrow seeps like sowed seeds, its reaching roots core deep.
And atop the tomb of lost youth, death dances to a soft tune.
A melancholic melody, better hummed than sung.
Drummed up from wails and moans above the frailest of bones.
A mother’s plight personified
A song of sorrows
A hymn of hopelessness
Broken and bare, the bearer of life gives way to demise
A father who sowed seed sees his plant pass for compost
A mother who bore fruit, rues the earth that pruned youth
A sibling swallows despair realizing the other half of its pair is parting
But despair not. Death and its dances prance about and declare
“She is not there.
She is everywhere.
From quirks to smirks and laughs to love, she exists.
From stares and glares to pats and hugs.
The body you brought before us was barren.
Everything she was was shared and stored.
And now, she is everywhere but where she was.”
Chapopo Chitembo
Chapopa Chitembo, known by his artistic alias Sempa Ty, is a Zambian-born poet, artist and photographer. He enjoys basketball, anime, love and life and dislikes nothing and no one. The poem Death and its dances is an ode to his recently deceased and dearly beloved sister, Pumba.