SocialistStories حكايات اشتراكية

Kenyan Historians
by Maina wa Kinyatti

Your silence after my arrest means
You have made an agreement with the dictator
You have betrayed those ideas our people
Cherish

One day
Our people will rise
And with anger and bitterness
Ask you
Where were you
When national independence was betrayed
When foreign military bases were built
In the country
When workers and peasants
Reduced to slavery
Their life clothed in poverty
Their homes flooded
With endless tears of oppression

You shall have nothing to tell them
Like a dead donkey

Mr. President
by Maina wa Kinyatti

You who have made yourself
Proprietor of our history
Defender of backward ideas
We are you captives
You can keep us in captivity
As long as you wish
You can murder us
But you cannot succeed in suppressing
Our revolutionary writings
You cannot cage ideas
You cannot murder ideas
Ideas belong to the people

In spite of your efforts
The fire of revolution
Will grow and spread
From universities to factories
From factories to the mountains
From the forests to the river banks
Your days are numbered

A Red Flag of Hope
by Maina wa Kinyatti

Aloneness
The cold chill of this life
But you have been in my mind
Throughout the season

How long this night?
The chains on my wrists and ankles
Whisper horror in my ears

The food half-cooked
Thrown on the dirty cement floor
The water contaminated
My cellmates lice and bedbugs

I have no other way to tell you
How they mutilate my soul
Every morning before the sun is awake
Do you hear my cry?
Can you feel my pain?

The guards
Have turned the prison
Into a charnel house