The Kenyan poet Jared Angira was born in 1947 and studied commerce at the University of Nairobi where he was also the editor of the journal Busara. He has spent much of his working life in the Kenyan civil service, and published seven volumes of poetry, which include Juices (1970), Silent Voices (1972), Soft Corals (1973), Cascades (1979), The Years Go By (1980), and Tides of Time: Selected Poems (1996).
He was once hailed by Wole Soyinka and lauded by Ezenwa-Ohaeto as “one of the most exciting poets in Africa.” As with many of his contemporary African poets, he has not received the critical acclaim many think he deserves. Deeply meditative, Angira’s work is deceptively simple and his choice of words may occasionally seem at odds with the gravity of his subject. As a Marxist poet—he once proclaimed: “Karl Marx is my teacher; Pablo Neruda my class prefect (when I am in the classroom) and my captain (when I am on the battlefield)”—his poetry evinces a critical concern with social injustice in post-independence society. Like his fellow Kenyan, Ngugi wa Thiongo, he is very critical of political and social developments in Kenya.
IT WOULDN’T MATTER NOW
I saw you grow in my heart
From that mustard seedling
The tender heather
Feeling the spread of our roots
Tightening the hold
Around my organs of survival
The branches spreading
With the courage of dawn
Umbrella shade to the scorching sun
Umbrella cover to the drenching rain
Even when the leaves turned yellow
I never noticed
When the leaves dried
I guess I never bothered
Because I did not know
But even if I bother now
The roots are long lost time in me
And it wouldn’t change a thing.
NO COFFIN, NO GRAVE
He was buried without a coffin
without a grave
the scavengers performed the post-mortem
in the open mortuary
without sterilized knives
in front of the night club
stuttering rifles put up
the gun salute of the day
that was a state burial anyway
the car knelt
the red plate wept, wrapped itself in blood its master’s
the diary revealed to the sea
the rain anchored there at last
isn’t our flag red, black, and white?
so he wrapped himself well
who could signal yellow
when we had to leave politics to the experts
and brood on books
brood on hunger
and schoolgirls
grumble under the black pot
sleep under torn mosquito net
and let lice lick our intestines
the lord of the bar, money speaks madam
woman magnet, money speaks madam
we only cover the stinking darkness
of the cave of our mouths
and ask our father who is in hell to judge him
the quick and the good
Well, his dairy, submarine of the Third World War
showed he wished
to be buried in a gold-laden coffin
like a VIP
under the jacaranda tree beside his palace
a shelter for his grave
and much beer for the funeral party
anyway one noisy pupil suggested we bring
tractors and plough the land.
