For Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (1938-2025)

For Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (1938-2025)

Tuesday, June 3, 2025 9:55 am


Niyi Osundare and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

Niyi Osundare and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

By Niyi Osundare

In the eloquent water of the River Between

Minnows argue the terror of the shark

Rifted mountains hold hands

Across a vast and breathless silence

 

A soil unspeakably rich:

Red-rooted vegetables beckon from roadside stalls

A corn-covered distance connects my eye

To a yearning horizon

 

Bleating sheep romp in temperate coats

Unmindful of donkeys trotting under

Their missionary burdens, trailed by tough-limbed

Peasants sobered by the vagaries of the market

 

 

Voices and echoes

Across rifted silences

Echoes and voices

Of half-told stories and syncopated songs:

 

Of the grain of wheat

Which feeds succeeding seasons,

The long, sweat-soaked journey

From grass to bread…

 

     In a house

Somewhere there in Kamiriithu

A story-teller was born

Whose tales traverse the world

 

*This tribute first appeared in “Flowers of the Rift Valley”, a section on Kenya in my book, If Only the Road Could Talk: Poetic Peregrinations in Africa, Asia, and Europe, published in 2017.

 

 


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