Get premium membership and access revision papers with marking schemes, video lessons and live classes.

Processing. Please wait.

Read the poem below and then answer the questions that follow.
No coffin, no grave
By Fared Angira
He was buried without a coffin
Without a grave
The scavengers performed the post-mortem
In the open mortuary
Without sterilized knives
In front of the night club
Stuttering rifles put up
The gun salute of the day
That was a state burial anyway
The car knelt
The red plate wept, wrapped itself in blood its
Master’s
The diary revealed to the sea
The rain anchored there at last
Isn’t our flag red, black and white?
So he wrapped himself well
Who could signal yellow
When we had to leave politics to the experts
And brood on books
Brood on hunger
And schoolgirls
Grumble under the black pot
Sleep under torn mosquito net
And let lice lick our intestines
The lord of the bar, money speaks madam
Woman magnet, money speaks madam
We only cover the stinking darkness of the cave of our mouths
And ask our father who is in hell to judge him
The quick and the good.

Answer Text:
(a) The poem is about the death of a ruler, who is a traitor. The ruler who is assassinated outside a night club, and his body is left to be devoured by vultures.
His diary is washed into the sea by rain and when it is found it reveals who the ruler was and
his desire to be buried in a dignified, grand funeral.
b) The words stuttering rifles are onomatopoeic.
They describe the sound of bullets flying from the rifles of the assassins
(b) The tone of the poem is satirical/ sarcastic. The poem is satirical about the arrogance of the politician who is very selfish and has no regard for other people.
The poem satirizes the politicians desire for a lavish
funeral but dies in very humiliating conditions.
d) The central theme of the poem is betrayal and change.
The politician has no regard for the downtrodden and poor people in the country, whose
interests he should be serving. He uses his money to buy cheap pleasure instead of engaging in constructive activities.
Change is represented by the assassination and at the end of the poem a pupil suggests that they bring tractors to plough the land; which represents a major change.
(e)(i) Yellow is not a color of the national flag of Kenya. The poet is asking who could contradict the politician who claimed to be the expert while the common citizens are cursed to brood on books, think about schoolgirls and hunger, and sleep hungry under torn mosquito nets.
ii) The possible meanings of this line are: first, it could literally mean that his diary was a submarine because it was found in the sea.
Secondly, it could mean that the ideas he had written in the diary were highly destructive and
irresponsible, to the extent that they could lead to the Third World War.
(f) People should be given civic education to elect responsible leaders with integrity.
(g) i. Secured or held firmly
ii. Think or worry about