A collection of poetry and reflections by African Writer Mary Kimani
Archive for March, 2007
March 29, 2007 at 5:55 pm · Filed under reflective poems
The dam explodes.
Agonised,
I reach out,
Grab a pen.
Instead of the tears that do not fall,
And the longings that are unspoken
Words explode on the pages,
Pain turning to poetry.
Line after line,
A cry,
A howl,
In place of the sound that fails to come out of my mouth.
The poems sigh and cry on my behalf-
They weep,
shout,
and rage.
And sometimes…
laugh at me-
At my vain attempt to flee reality-
Hide in the smooth flow of rhythmic verse.
But I do not mind.
I know the poetry to be true
so I take the pen
write more of this poetry.
For though the poem weep,
Though the poem shout,
Though it laughs,
It is still my catharsis-
my poetry of recovery.
unpublished poem by Mary Kimani dated 18 March 1999
March 29, 2007 at 4:11 pm · Filed under Africa
The thought pummels through my mind,
Unidentified,
Yet,
Heavy-
Oppressive-
As I face the tomorrow of my life.
One impinged upon by the grasping unyielding tentacles-
of our yesterday.
And yet I have,
With such audacity,
Set forth to declare
Once and for all,
That this time I shall not be cowed.
I will not move back,
I will not retrace my steps,
I am moving forward
I will never cast my eye back again.
And I want to say that it is not true
that man is irrevocably bound by his past,
That, try as he might,
His mind will always roam and settle there
Or that in his most unconscious thoughts
he will reflect unceasingly upon it.
I want to say that I am, at most,
a pitiable dramatist and illusionist
But this time I have set the cast
and the play is on stage-
And I am moving back no more-
The curtain call has sounded,
And the main lead is not going to bring us
a soliloquy of his past tragedies.
I have determined that
though I be charged with being a chauvinist
a post I neither esteem nor desire,
I will go ahead to stage what my firm faith has always been-
That tomorrow, at least for me,
Is going to be a better day
That I have not lost all
That I am not enslaved
That I shall not put down my arms
That I will look ahead,
that if need be I shall go down fighting,
but that I shall prevail,
so help me God.
Unpublished poem dated December 31 1998
March 29, 2007 at 3:22 pm · Filed under love poems
Knowing you,
Is the privilege of my life.
Loving you
Is a bittersweet experience
Knowing you can never be mine
Caring all the same
Knowing you may never understand
But being happy anyway.
Knowing that one day
It may fade into your dust of old memories
And willing it not to be so
And yet knowing
That that is humanity’s way-
Knowing you
Has been the privilege of my life
Loving you
A bittersweet experience
For me the dust may not gather
And it is not because I am young
And know not how life goes
It is because..
It is because
No nomad in the desert forgets the season when it rained.
Knowing you..
How can I explain?
4 August 2000
March 29, 2007 at 3:21 pm · Filed under reflective poems
Dear Mother,
Today,
I stand at the edge of life,
Peering over the cliff,
Sure now
That I could never jump,
Wondering why I ever thought I could.
I stand,
Aware that I have lived beyond my time
Known secrets reserved for old women
Tasted sorrows reserved for the matured and tempered.
But somehow, though always standing right here at the edge,
I have not jumped over the cliff.
It is hard to walk away from the comfort of the known to the unknown.
Hard to wake up and start anew.
I know I am not the same,
Because the yearnings for a new life
are stronger than the pull
and comfort of yesterday’s known way of living.
I must say that standing here
one tends to get lost
for so dizzying is the experience
of precariously standing at the edge of a cliff
knowing that it only takes one step to go tumbling down.
It is over now,
I tell myself,
It is really over,
Finally after so many years of living,
I am free-
Free to walk away
Free to start anew
The hatred is over,
The conflict has died.
I am free now
Finally my life can begin.
unpublished poem- dated 27 July 2000 .
March 8, 2007 at 8:29 pm · Filed under Poems of War
The stairwell goes nowhere.
It cascades endlessly into emptiness—
Hopes lie dashed somewhere at the end of this
infinity.
The flowers bloom,
but there is no scent.
Bees do not come here.
The apparent look of life
hides the death that encroaches day after day.
There is a weeping sound in the wind:
you won’t hear it,
but I do.
It is the familiar sound of wailing minds.
I pause, listen, and weep.
There is little else to do.
We have been dying a long time,
and though the bodies no longer litter the streets,
the dying has not stopped.
We die a little every day,
peering down the stairwell that goes nowhere,
reaching in vain
for the hopes that lie dashed
somewhere at the end of this infinity.
Poem by Mary Kimani, published in He Didn’t Die Easy
March 8, 2007 at 4:26 pm · Filed under love poems
The cows don’t moo as often as they did before,
And even when they do
I cannot hear them above the din
Of my lonely heart.
The sun don’t shine so bright no more
And even if it does,
I cannot see it for the blinding pain
Of my lonely heart.
Nature seems to pair everyone
From birds and bees
To the young and old,
But I cannot seem to find a partner
For my lonely heart.
And its been growing darker every day
Summer waning
Autumn dying
And winter approaching
For my lonely heart.
Am lonely.
unpublished poem by Mary Kimani dated 11 March 2008
March 2, 2007 at 6:54 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
You have become for me like a wisp of smoke,
Some intangible madness-
A thought…
A presence that I feel all around me and yet, cannot touch.
I try to reach out and you elude me-
And leave me pensive asking my many whys?
And when I rest, I finally find you,
And when I do…
I am lost.
For what is this that I sought?
The knowledge has left me maddened,
Unable to flee-
And I wish I had not sought to know.
-unpublished poem by Mary Kimani, dated 04 January 2003
March 2, 2007 at 3:32 pm · Filed under Poems of War
The valley is steeped,
green grass as far as the eye can see…
And it covers a mass grave.
I know not the others
But I know a child lies there,
A child I put to death.
Carved him out with a knife
Into pieces.
I did not look to his face
Afraid to acknowledge what I had done in my heart
But it has not helped.
That green valley is in my mind
I carry it everywhere I go
The mass grave is in my mind
The bones are in my mind
The dead bodies are buried in my conscience,
I cannot flee
I cannot flee.
Unpublished poem by Mary Kimani, dated August 20, 2004
March 2, 2007 at 3:24 pm · Filed under commentary on modern society
The sewer is blocked.
And the effluent flows everywhere-
…Nothing works anymore
Men in well pressed suits.
And women like the latest Paris models
Hop and skip and jump-
To cross the river of dung that flows over the street.
We walk around
Well dressed mannequins
mired in our own waste
Unclean
Unholy
Ripe
… in need of a lancing.
The effluent
The dung
Flowing freely on the streets.
Unpublished poem by Mary Kimani, dated January 15, 2003
March 2, 2007 at 3:16 pm · Filed under Poems of War
When the poem began
We were walking on the streets,
You and I,
Hand in hand-
When the poem began
We were laughing,
You and I,
Hand in hand,
When the poem began.
And we traveled on
You and I,
Blissfully unaware,
Of all the things that the world saw as different-
Between you and I,
When the poem began.
But as the poem progressed,
We dared to look at each other
And alas,
We began to see,
All the things that we had never bothered to see
Those things that were different
Between you and I.
So as the poem progressed
We saw difficulties we had never seen before
And we became afraid,
And we began to fight,
reasonably at first,
Then nastier and nastier,
Until anyone who had seen us as friends,
Could recognise us no more-
The poem is coming to an end
And as we looked into each other’s eyes
We couldn’t help but wonder
What had gone wrong.
Now we stand
Each on his own
And I am afraid to ask
If we can let the poem begin anew.
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