The people we have 'disapperared'

Westgate has opened up old griefs that were not properly grieved...

Disappearance

Six British nationals are confirmed dead.

There was a Canadian diplomat.

Every nation reckons its stricken citizens.

The list reads like the guest list

of a diplomatic get-together

(pardon this irreverence).

Had this been that kind of gathering,

would we have included the waiters?

Would we have numbered the chef

the ayah, the cleaner,  or the messenger?

The media and foreign offices

catalogue people who are not us –

at least not the rest of us.

The rest of us have become illegible,

like the Tana River 500, the Wajir,

and Mandera hundreds,

the 42 on the Narok bus, and

Mombasa Road’s daily toll.

Earth cries for her children

buried into burning holes of grief;

into fiery bosoms of pain.

Earth cries for her un-eulogised.

See how we deny them a mention in death

just as we disappeared them in life.

These are the ones we cremate conveniently

in national amnesia.

After every tragedy we bring up

the palimpsest and swear

then swiftly overwrite it with the newest grief.

From Sinai to Sachang’wan

we stand indicted, the flames

of Kiambaa an unheeded subpoena.

The only forensic evidence

is found in the trembling hands of old

people petrified by anguish

and a reluctant acceptance.

 

Undying death (all the deaths we die)

For Michael Onsando, who insisted I should write about 'death in small doses'. This is also possibly the darkest poem I have written.

Quotidian death

He has eyes the colour of doves.

You half expect them to take wing.

He sits there playing with his phone,

from time to time raising his head

as if to verify he is actually in the room.

These days he doesn’t give away much.

He used to be different: a closed book,

but one I knew was there,

solidly occupying the same earth as me.

These days he is an ephemeralness.

He occupies a body; clothes.

But it seems as if his inner being

went somewhere, or at best

doesn’t visit his body as often.

He is not quite like a ghost.

Ghosts are grey, often menacing,

and sometimes dangerous.

His eyes are the colour of absence.

He has become like an abandoned tipper

from which life falls noiselessly in the dusk.

Even rust won’t touch him.

It is hard to tell when he began to depart:

it is difficult to track the progress of a shadow.

Death isn’t like a sundial.

I am afraid one day I shall find

he has turned into a mummified

boneless unbeing ambling about.

I am afraid he will not know how to die.

 

My salute to post-Westgate blood donors

Love after Westgate

I feared we might become a bunkered state,
a plastic nation with resin for blood.

We chose instead, to let our veins.
Running full throttle, we bled.

They stole some of our blood.
But we gave the rest willingly:

rivers of humans choosing to suffer;

to give birth to a new life, pint by pint.

We loved our injured with our blood
and bled internally for the slain.

This is our testimony; a signature in red.

It's that time of year

Jacarandas in September

Maiden blushes, pubertal bashfulness.
There is no hint of passion,
nor clue that in a little while
the world will wear a purple wedding gown.
Poets will be led to the altar
and wed for a few months –
some on their knees in despair –
then abandoned  for nine months.

Where do jacarandas go, when they go?

They are not angels.
They seem to thrive in their floral
ephemerality;
hordes of ephemera with a
a memory more sure than elephants’.

They come back as priests whose religion
seems to be, simply,
Be.

In September language starts as a stammer of colour,
the script of Spring; a sliver of imagery.
Before long they are a violet song,
a palette of eloquence;
a river speaking in tongues of men and seraphs.

I would join their faith
if I knew how to embrace
the communion of the falling and the fallen.