Interface

INTERFACE
Before the sun toughens, the morning’s shrewd
A stretch of road lies parallel to a stretch of railway
A brook of raw sewer runs parallel to the railway
Make-shift growers subsidised to water their greens
A junkyard adjoins the trio from which throngs of
Pied crows and hogs thrive from the junk-pile
A crossroad cuts across all four essentially trimming
The drive between Umoja Estate and cbd of Nairobi
Commuter train, bus, and cycle link and thrive from here
Hawkers, peddlers, beggars scramble to meet target

Out of the jungle of things rattles a locomotive engine
Led by roaring trumpet and two glaring headlamps
Rips a tunnel his size through the air and splashes gusts
Of recycled air and shrapnel of dust along old, squalid estate
Rumbling, trembling, he clumsy dares intruders
Motorists scurry lest the train whelms the level-crossing
Prompted and agitated by impulse to kill
Like man-eater of Tsavo he roars and hammers
The diesel-powered engine casts a metal-crushing note
Long, live, bulky like a slope in motion croaks and grunts
Dark coils of carbon from combustion mode
Subserviently, a bus driver thirsts for fairness barred in
The sandwich of cars in front and trails behind
Regular, assured, growling monster made for
Triumph, made to subdue, made to make money
Absolute power’s a blend of shortcomings

Less skewed to instant brake the monster clunks!
Bus driver limps off the cabin and melts into the crowd
In abrupt change of course the mighty joins the meek
Wailing and groaning with distress, the beast
Away from the fond interface, affectionately grants her
Over hundred metres of ride, goring and trunk-lifting
Made to create wealth, she can’t work from home
Trembling with savagery, the train engine’s idling
Grooming bloody carcass like lion grooms a gazelle
Coupled with vestibules the segments look mesmerised
Vagrants and vendors scuffle in sorting out valuables

Men troop to get a first-hand perusal of the grand union
Good Samaritan administer the First Aid to the casualties
Some ferried to infirmary while the dead laid by the rails
In atonement for human error and trembling with tremor
The bus driver ruminates, totters his way to the priest
Locomotive driver unharmed and unalarmed surveys
The magnitude of ruin
Calm face ranks him off the wavelength of reproach
Not the first encounter with the kind of lawbreakers
Two drivers commission citizen for heaven express
A dozen souls rally in unison to the glory land

Two fire engines with siren gone off
Standby for any eventuality
Two rescue vans with strobe light on
Two police trucks with sodium lamp lit
Police cordon off the scene of interface and load
Bloody corpses on the trucks till we meet again
To grace the final rite
Muslims poised to get buried before the sunset
Christians stuffed in morgues pending
Post-mortem data and distant kith and kin.

Poet:  Michael M Njoroge