×
The Standard Group Plc is a multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper print operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The Standard Group is recognized as a leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key influence in matters of national and international interest.
  • Standard Group Plc HQ Office,
  • The Standard Group Center,Mombasa Road.
  • P.O Box 30080-00100,Nairobi, Kenya.
  • Telephone number: 0203222111, 0719012111
  • Email: [email protected]

The Darkest Hour: Death too can be art

My Man

dyingman

I was going to write about this topic last weekend, when we all were commemorating the plague that in its thirty third year, has managed to burn through the human species, extinguishing 36 million souls in its wake.

But then the Magu tragedy happened, so I wrote about my old pal instead with the result that our librarian Jesse Kamwaro send me a text warning, that with friends like the Magi, I am being rapidly unfriended on Facebook.

Anyway, exactly ten years ago, on the Monday of December 13, a very beloved and close relative of mine found out he was positive. He was just 25 years old. He walked into a dingy shebeen, as one Benson Riungu calls them, and wrote the one and only poem he ever would in his life.

 

Silence my fear, oh please, silence my fear.

The Darkness is near, down here, there is a strange twilight,

Caressing my heart, tonight.

The darkest hour is upon me, the uncashed cheque of death on a cheap stool beside me.

I am drifting, drifting along, sitting on a lifeboat made of metal,

underneath murky skylight, waiting for another day to die.

Six O’clock and the sun gathers a crimson blanket,

She is ready for slumber, but I am not.

I am not ready for my number to be up,

I take another sip from my stinky brandy cup,

Am I dying, did I stay out too late?

I should be thinking, but I cannot concentrate.

I want to run, but I switch to stinky rum,

I am hemmed into this black empty fate, at any rate.

Maybe, just maybe, everyone of us,

Has this dark empty space,

where they cannot write four, let alone for ever,

and all the memories tell a different lie tonight.

In between are different truths, which are more than I know

What I do know is that life is too short to be afraid, even at 25.

And yesterday can always be tomorrow interrupted.

And tomorrow interrupted will always be filled with yesteryears.

And how to hold the small things in our lives a little closer,

How to pull them a little nearer to recognise exquisite beauty.

Death too can be art.

 

Tell me the words I have been waiting to hear,

Even if the single tear building in the corner of my eye,

Tells me these words are mine, not yours,

to tell the world to the End of Time.

I know the words are empty, but then everything is empty,

and everything is eventual, and we all fall through the trap door,

and back into eternity.

 

Dated 13/12/2004.

My relative, forever in my heart, lived another eight and three quarters of a year the Monday after he wrote this poem.

He was one of the 36 million.

 

[email protected]

photo:jco.ascopubs.org

 

Related Topics


.

Similar Articles

.

Recommended Articles