Blood Sunday - Kithaka wa Mberia

I 

Beats of Reggae

Roar/rumble in the air

And get mixed

With sunrise

 

In the village

Mirrors, windows

And doors

Greet the command/order

From the hard destruction

Of the hungry ones

And expectations

Of two decades.

 

Inside the shops

Waves of people

Rise, go down

And get up elsewhere

These shelves and walls

Change faces

Like branches of trees

When the hot season takes place.

 

Tools/gadgets of each family

Clothes of each colour

Take seat in the heads

Hang in the hands

Sleep on the backs

Or are pressed in the armpit

Changing dwelling/place

And reign/authority.

 

II

Bullets

Start to whistle

 

And angrily

Dislocate/move suddenly the walls

Electric poles

Multicoloured cars

And meat and bones

 

People stagger

Blood flows/drips

Life slips down/glides

 

III

Suddenly

Beats of Reggae

Dry up

And songs of yesterday

Return in the air

Like stink that

Invades the nose again

After being brought down

By the destruction of heaven

 

From my kitchen

The road is clear/evident -

Multicoloured cars

Military tanks with blemishes/spots

Flow/trickle like a river,

Guns point to the left

On the right, in the back and front

(With) dangerous machine guns

Are set ready/are prepared in the sky;

This flow/trickling

Is a return trip

God-of-flexibility returns

On the platform [of the watchman guarding a field].

 

IV

In the understanding

Different/all kinds of thoughts

Go past/pass by in turns

Like butterflies and moths

Passsing by in groups

In front of the eyes;

 

Smiling

I remember Obasanjo¹

And his clear/clever decision/verdict

But also

With sorrow

I remember Bokassa² and Amin³,

And Mobutu⁴ and Doe⁵,

And blood and skulls

A lot of skulls!

Wheels of thoughts

Reach a crossroad

And with time, get stuck

Before starting the journey again

In the clear/open road

Of the national government

 

Even when they are guided

By group of spirits/ghosts

---

Kithaka wa Mberia (born 1955) Kenya

Katriina Ranne and The Poetry Translation Workshop

Source: Poetry Translation Centre

1. Olusegun Matthew Okikiola Ogunboye Aremu Obasanjo, army general and former president of Nigeria, 1976-1979 & 1999-2007;
2. Jean-Bédel Bokassa, military officer and former head of state of the Central African Republic and its successor state, the Central African Empire from 1966 to 1979;
3. Idi Amin Dada Oumee, Ugandan military officer and politician who served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979;
4. Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, Congolese politician and military officer who was the president of Zaire from 1965 to 1997;
5. Samuel Kanyon Doe, former president of Liberia, 1980-1990.