Remember Kenule

Death, as the Elizabethan poet
put it, is a necessary end.
It will come when it will come.

But your death, indeed,
grieves me, Kenule.
How you died in silence
at the taut end of the rope
is a strange tide unleashed
by those who believe that
every daring dream is not
worth more than a pint of blood.

On the scaffold, Kenule,
you defied the mystery of the shore,
your lores foiled the tides
of their carnage. And where
no other laughter could weigh,
yours meted and still found them
wanting in their shekels.

When you stooped for the rope,
your voice bled with the sea,
and your silence now becomes
the choral cry of the Nile.