Grain-scatterer, we too have shed our apostolic alias

and followed you into the shade to hear our voices

bloom. Here rapoko, here chibage, here zviyo, here

nzungu, here nhanga, here sweet, sweet nhope.

Here a name we call ourselves.

Here a thing we will not do: thief.

Grain-distributor, we will trade words with you. We

give an mbeu here for a buried seed there. We

mark up the goods by candlelight, in blue or red

ink. We shrink with doubt from a place called

Nation. One thing we can say for sure: We will never be

a colony again. Need the obvious be stated this way?

Gainsayer, what would you ask us to ask now: What is dying

below the topsoil, that dusting of iron will, nitrous rage,

pot ash? What birthright is traded when a crow

takes cover in a rooster's nest? What will translate this

long century into a new election cycle, a conference

of women, men, young visionaries, old dreamers

debating under the Wangari's forest of green umbrellas?

We will plough your plot, furrow its surface, burrow in the

tunnels of language. Our dismay is our hope, present at

every meeting. In simpler times the answers might have

slipped off our tongues. Now family feuds erupt into wars.

It seems these devilish thorns and eroded rock are also our

inheritance: these lands, these languages, these mother tongues.

You have left us no choice, O stubborn prophet of Gĩkũyũ,

but to try our tongue, and listen as silence softly

breaks.