kenyaimagine.com

Home

Politics

Flags of our Fathers

Written by Dorothy Adhiambo

Saturday, 09 February 2008

All around us, Kenyans have taken most ardently to new identities, identities built on fanciful ideas we have long ago left behind us but which today take on an urgency that sustains us, and kills us.

How much difference
a small matter a few years
this little land,
ours just yesterday
floating on the runway of promise
readying herself for flight
into the stars
Happier wealthier going there
Now, theirs
met with cruelest hindrance
fiery and obstinate
her emblems cast to the ground
stained in the mud
her people eager
giving their hearts lending their souls over
to the most arduous hatred
and lowest greed
her standard now razed
For their viewing pleasure
with the fieriest contumely

Enticed ensnared
the inducements of pride
the Smell of our blood
Smell of our earth
the sweet simplicity of follies we build
prodded and goaded
the fists of our drivers,
they're punching the blue sky
Promising rain
Swearing milk
and honey, soft billowy clouds
now pools of blood
shafts of red smoke evil
a grey pall embracing us
the call of Death's Valley
still we are goaded
we gather we march
to Hell's Gate and on
we shout for death
to still this pride
dented now in us now
Tomorrow in another

Dorothy Adhiambo
		About the author:

Related Articles:

Articles by this Author:

Sixty Skits I
The Jambula Tree

View all articles by this author

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email This

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (3)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

hamartia and peripeteia
written by Stephen Wanyama , February 09, 2008

Till we burn them down, these flags of ours fathers, bury them deep where no light shall shine on them ever, then will rise our tomorrow and not a day before.

Hell's Gate (Naivasha) and the entirety of Death's Valley call out to us asking that we stop in the name of Kenya. The power for me lies as with Waweru in the verse that recalls a plane crashing just as it is taking off, with all its livery in the mud, but there is also a warning in those last lines that there really is no victory here.

.........this pride
dented now in us now
Tomorrow in another

As Hell's Gate showed, there will be revenge attacks, and then we will revenge, and they will revenge and soon there will be no heads that are not rolling down the valley, eyes wide shut, blind to the blood, the entrails and the smoke.

Asante Dorothy.

report abuse

vote down

vote up

Votes: +0

I like
written by Truthseeker , February 09, 2008

Enticed ensnared
the inducements of pride
the Smell of our blood
Smell of our earth
the sweet simplicity of follies we build
prodded and goaded
the fists of our drivers,
they're punching the blue sky
Promising rain
Swearing milk
and honey,

Swearing milk, smell of blood, smell of soil - Swearing fealty to Rift Valley, its blood and soil was always promoted on some idea that the 'natives' were 'people of the milk'.
And Kenya's standard, her flag is burning, I hear there are already sign-posts put up declaring entry into the Rift Valley Republic.
The Majimbo are follies, they may seem pretty to us now, but as the last few weeks have shown they will be the destruction of our nation.
Finally, those lines about promising milk and honey! The ODM's messianic screed did promise milk and honey, a promised land over the Kikuyu hegemony where everything was green and fertile, no death, no tears, money for everyone, and the premature victory celebrations, sigh!

report abuse

vote down

vote up

Votes: +0

Thx.
written by Daniel.Waweru , February 13, 2008

Dorothy,

I'm absolutely no use at telling whether poetry is any good. But I liked the controlling metaphor(?) of an attempted takeoff gone horribly wrong. Reminded me of the final scene of Koyaanisqatsi for some reason.

Anyway, thanks.

Daniel, edited for a link to the scene, Ed.

report abuse

vote down

vote up

Votes: +0

Show/Hide comment form