Voices in a flame

Let fly the defaced flag,
Cutting across the Southerly winds,
As the Malawi sun,
Passes through some black back ground.
Let the world behold the unfurling of a white sun,
Because darkness no longer roams the Blantyre,
Lilongwe,
Mzuzu,
Dedza,
Salima,
Nkhata-bay,
Rumphi,
Chitipa,
Kasungu,
Nkhota-kota,
Nsanje,
And Mulanje
Night.

Red no longer lives,
Where once the rising sun peeped through the cloud.
It is black in its stead,
A symbol of the tarred miles we have walked,
Under the professor,
A professor without real students.

As naughty University of Malawi students scuffle for limited space,
And lecturers eat chips marked with chalk dust,
The professor without students has made a classroom out of the nation,
Filling the Makiyolobasi Director General's mouth with some weighty verbage
At the mention of the professor without students's name.

As the flag waves at the passing sun,
Making friends with everyday winds,
Chasing sanity from the solemn sky,
Some contemporaries of the professor without students wave good-bye,
To the national-class that stares above from below,
Making do with the thumbing of the professor without students' s feet.

The flag huggs the night owl,
Looking perplexed at its lazy flow,
And the professor with students says 'No',
See you somewhere beyond the blue sky,
Having been failed by the Ocean vehicle I pushed,
To promote your well-being.

So the flag waves again,
Waving bye to the man no longer being,
Having lost his invisible life flag,
Somewhere Down South,
Whence he trodded to seek new life,
Perhaps a new breath.

The sound of the new flag howls no more,
As now it is the professor without students's howl,
Condoling the morning star,
Over the other real professor's over-flown soul.

'Flags, like poles that hoist them, do not live long'
He reminds the class-of-a-nation that nothing is eternal under the new flag,
And that flying from Down South will not make it eternal.
But knows the class-of-a-nation that the professor without students through an invisible arrow,
Into the soul of the gone sparrow,
Sending him up yonder,
Beyond the new flag