True to
The saying
“The pen is mightier
Than the sword”
To your enemies
Deep-cutting and
Mask-divesting
Were every  of
Your  acerbic satire, also
Bitter-truth packed word.
“To ignore
His pen we ill afford
Nor could we
Fight him back
Word for word.
So covertly
Let us
Strike him  down
With a sword
About his whereabouts
Effacing a word!” they said
Forgetting
As a writer Baalu
Was worth his weight
In gold,
Whose books strangely
In large numbers sold
Though some of them,
To gut down,
They did try to hoard.

For want of
A photocopy machine then
Many were happy
To distribute
A hand-written copy.


Baalu, deep when you think,
Your pen when you pick
With it loud to speak,
Your subjects used to jump
Out of their skin
Scared of a basilisk!

Your pen
On your characters' neck
A pain
Was haunting their brain!
Yes your pen
Was their bane!

Dust to dust
You and also your enemies
With their sword
Had hopped on
Death's bandwagon
Yet your pen
Surfing back
The tide of time
Resurfaces again.//

To Baalu Girma Ethiopian writer and journalist detained on the covert and  believed killed by the diabolic derg regime. Iron censorship was the order of the day.

Baalu Girma (also rendered Be'alu) (1939–1984) was an Ethiopian journalist known for his criticism of prominent members of the Derg, then Ethiopia’s...