Are you there, Mecere, still fine and firm
In the blackened system, cruel and infirm?
Where is our fragrance of friends
who fought with green twigs
For voice of wisdom, Ugali and grass
Voice Mathare Valley, River Road and
space between Nakuru and Nariobi.
I remember the blast
Shaking the white Norfolk Hotel at midnight
Shattering campus window panes and
Graveyard peace of urban elites
Leisure life in Hilton Inn, Jacaranda and Serena
Black monolith Kenyatta Center did also shiver.
Kisumu Nairobi Mombasa Train
An old lady with wonderful grace
Daily moved like an ebony cylinder
At times like a glistening cobra snake
In wood and safari plain
Carrying curious eyes of white men.
Fascinated I, get fastened in the belly of gorgeous snake
Kisum-Mombasa wonderful train
With glazed scales as window panes.
Free Masai, proud panthers, and golden lions
Spangled zebras, ridgley giraffe
Carrying birds in thorny grass
I run through them in Mombasa train.
A gentle tap on my hand
Ebony grace on a chiseled face
White teeth adorning spotless sun
I turn around and struck with surprise
See the train bearer with gracious smile.
He smiles. A morning garden sprouts
in me throwing away mean Nairobi in me.
Warm, grace, generous and decent,
He bows with his sumptuous plates;
Pine apples, papaya, juice passion fruits
Water melons, corn flakes and aromatic coffee best.
He spreads the table and spreads all with smile and grace.
“What else would you like to have?”
He says like an angel concerned.
I thank him with my watery mouth
Pleased and sure he gently retires
Behind white curtains of slithering train.
Outside the train some wolves cry
Droughts have damned safari lands.
No rain this year. It was not last.
Cobras hides have gone to cities
On dead elephants’ ivory stacks
Plies as tourist luggage from safari land to city Nairobi.
White men oversee in the Rift Valley
Many rifts in human landscapes:
Sunken faces, receding eyes
Half moon dark stomach
hanging on straw frames.
Trees without leaves
and leaves without trees
Far away last dying vulture screech
Dusty dry bones hurt its parched beak.
Plundered Highlands with stony face
Heave over bodies of Kikuyu dead,
And far away Akamba, Luo and Masai in desert lands
Are trapped, tried and whipped all the night.
Mecere Mugo, tell me dear, how long?
And are you, at least, alright?
I await, you say ashante, not hakuna,
Even though you could be crying
under the rubbles of unfinished Uhuru.
M. Hasan
Sports Club, Ahmedabad
May 5, 2000
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Note: Ashante = Thanks; Hakuna = No; Uhuru = Freedom in Kiswahili
