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the poisoned chalice

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The chalice meant for celebration Was lifted in borrowed faith, Not brewed in malice or temptation, But hope, too eager, sealed its fate. I wish it shattered at my feet Before my lips consented wrong— Now ash rehearses on my tongue As heaven and hell dispute my song. Had I been schooled in ancient vows, A monk of Athens or of Rome, I’d bless the cup with careful brows Before I named its poison home. Will they mourn, knowing I agreed To fate disguised as honest wine? Or laugh, then bury guilt in soil Where ignorance blooms red with time? Let truth not fracture at the grave, Nor history revise my name. Let goodness stand, unbought, unbraved, Though rumor plays its petty game. For though my stay was brief to some, I healed where silence used to be— A passing remedy, perhaps, But still an act of efficacy. If this be where the curtain falls, Midway through promised happiness, Then count my thoughts as fertile fields Awaiting joy in lateness. I am not courting death by will— Let ...
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Critical Analysis of After the Storm by Bunguswa BrianAnalysis by Lindah Nyongesa, University of the Witwatersrand.

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Critical Analysis of After the Storm by Bunguswa Brian Analysis by Lindah Nyongesa, University of the Witwatersrand. After the Storm operates as a mature counter-text to its predecessor, shifting the poetic gaze from confrontation to consequence. Where I Was the Shelter, Not the Storm articulates injury and misrepresentation, this sequel is invested in the ethics of aftermath—what remains when narrative conflict exhausts itself. The poem is less reactive and more architectural; it builds rather than defends. Central to the poem’s success is its sustained domestic imagery. The house, roof, windows, and cup function as symbolic vessels of endurance. These are not passive objects but moral witnesses that “remember heat, not blame,” suggesting that memory, when stripped of accusation, retains sensation without bitterness. The cracked cup, refigured as a “map, not a fault,” exemplifies the poem’s core argument: damage can become knowledge rather than shame. This re-symbolisati...
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After the Storm.

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After the storm learned another name, silence moved in like a careful tenant. Walls remembered heat, not blame, and the roof practiced patience with the sky. Footsteps faded into a language of dust, leaving rooms to relearn echo, leaving light to choose its angles. Morning arrived without witnesses, carrying bread-smell and small mercies. The cup, once accused, held water steady, its crack a map, not a fault. Windows opened their throats to birds, and the house discovered a pulse that did not ask permission. Stories continued elsewhere, sharpening mirrors, but the river kept its grammar simple. Current over stone, truth over time, no footnote for reflection. Even the fire forgot the match, warming hands that stayed, teaching ash how to rest. Now the shelter grows moss and memory, a green insistence against ruin. Clouds pass without rehearsal, rain signs its name and leaves. What remains is the craft of standing, learning weather without becoming it, and letting roofs be roo...
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I was the shelter, not the storm.

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She left like a match dropped in dry season, and called the fire “my temper.” Now her timeline blooms with thorns she names “my wounds,” each caption a soft lie dressed in lilies. I read them like weather reports of a storm I survived, wondering how the lightning learned my name, and why the rain keeps apologizing. I was the clay cup that held her thirst, yet she says I was the crack. She gathers sympathy like beads for a rosary of regrets, counting my flaws as prayers. But I remember the nights she borrowed my sunrise, then returned only the shadows, and said darkness was my design. Her posts are mirrors she polishes with blame, reflecting a man she never met. I am a river she crossed on her own reflection, then claimed the water drowned her. The world drinks her version like sweetened tea, while my truth sits, unsipped, cooling beside the memory of her hands. Let her rewrite the sky if it gives her peace, I have already learned the language of clouds. Pain is an ink that ...
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Eclipsed Echoes.

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We built our tomorrows with trembling hands, Wearing promises like wedding bands of dawn, Yet somewhere between our laughter’s pause, A hush began to haunt the edges of your eyes, And I mistook it for peace, not pain. The moon knew what I didn’t — That silence is a wound that bleeds without red. Your words became feathers floating nowhere, And your smile, a curtain hiding slow goodbyes, While I sang to ghosts of our engagement. I sent you poems wrapped in unasked questions, But your replies came in echoes too faint to hold. The wind carried your absence like a letter, Stamped with something the living can’t deliver, And still, I waited at the altar of denial. Your laughter had once been the rhythm of rain, Now it fell in whispers against my chest. Leukemia — your hidden thief of hours — Was sipping light from your veins in secret, While I mistook your stillness for healing. How foolish the heart that prays without listening, That calls your quiet a form of grace. I thought ...
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Raila Odinga: The Years of Fire and Silence.

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CHAPTER ONE: THE MAN WHO REFUSED TO BEND. Kenya remembers him not as a man, but as a season. A long, defiant season that refused to end when the clocks of comfort demanded silence. When history bowed before tyrants, one voice—trembling yet unbroken—rose like thunder beneath forgotten clouds. That voice was Raila Amolo Odinga. I, the land that birthed him, have known his footsteps before I knew his name. They were the kind that pressed the soil not in haste, but with purpose—as if even the dust beneath his feet needed awakening. In those early mornings by the lake, when fishermen cast their nets into uncertain waters, his mother whispered a prayer to the waves: Let this one carry the weight of justice like a calabash of fire, and never spill. The year was 1945—an age when the world still reeled from war, and Kenya’s sky hung heavy with the smoke of colonial grief. In Maseno, where the grass bends to the whispers of wind, a child cried. But his cry was different. It was long,...
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Elegy for Raila Odinga.

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Kenya wakes in black scarves of dawn, her rivers kneeling, whispering your name RAYILA. The sun halts halfway through its duty— it too cannot believe a torch can dim. You were the storm that learned to speak gently, a lion who roared through prisons of silence, your voice a wind bending history’s spine, your eyes—two moons over the valley of struggle. Today, the soil remembers your footsteps, each grain trembling beneath Uhuru’s tree. The wind from Kibera hums your unfinished hymn, and Lake Victoria weeps into her blue shawl. Even stones, those proud witnesses of time, crack open—revealing red roots of remembrance. We the children of your stubborn dream, walk barefoot through your legacy’s ash. O Raila, son of Odinga, freedom’s last syllable rests upon your lips. You taught us that dying is not defeat, but the final verse of a people’s song. Sleep now, baba wa taifa, beneath a sky stitched with your own courage. The tears we shed are not of despair— they are rivers returnin...
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