Engravings
1.
between rubble and sovereign sun
all water consumed
all wailing subdued
since dawn
time
this land remains the same:
the open wound of Africa
2.
a tortured geology
seen by the bird as it soars
beneath each step
skin stripped clean
no clouds of ash
not yet
3.
Ardoukoba*
is proud
since awakening men
were they too stone-faced
to suit his taste?
4.
that the Prophet had to bless the land of the Habash**—
in remembrance of Bilal—
does not explain my afflicted shore
5.
the herd is thinner here
than anywhere else
anyways so are the men
6.
a port
a town
garrison
a simple railroad track
a fortress considered rich
in one’s own backyard
7.
for miniature republic
parsimonious poems
*name of a young volcano in the Republic of Djibouti
**Ethiopia
Translator’s note: Bilal, Islam’s first muezzin, was one of the faithful companions
of the Prophet Muhammad.
Time
the foam of daydreams dissolving
when brushed by the raw real world
never stops bubbling before my eyes
I see it now as I see you
in this gaping day of post-night
everything floats enclosed in its form-to-be
the seed claims to push a stalk, weak
as a phallus post-sex
trapped between being and time
By Night
Incredible silence, except for the drone of the fridge—
metallic cricket.
The pencil’s fine tip, its miniscule sex
leaves tracks in the white page’s sands, obliging mistress.
The lead spreads scribbles, loves
with a feverish love while the man flings
there his pressing desires—after-midnight seed.
Translator’s note: In a fortuitous coincidence, “pencil” and “penis”
in English are derived from the same Latin root.
Translator’s Note
One of the challenges I have faced when translating Waberi is to honor the music infused in his poems. French, by its very nature, tends to be very melodious, with certain vowel sounds singing even in everyday speech. I map the sounds of the original text (assonance and alliteration), and try to get as close to the original French as possible. However, I generally must content myself with replicating only patterns of sounds, rather than exact sounds, because I do not want to stray too far from the literal meaning of the text. In addition, many French vowel sounds simply do not exist in English (e.g., the nasal vowels, as well as the crisper vowels). Regarding rhythm, another aspect of music, the majority of French words stress the last syllable. To preserve their rhythm, I attempted to end lines with English words that stressed the last syllable or were mono-syllabic, as well as to limit unstressed syllables to two in a row, as generally occurs in French. The example below was my sound map for the first stanza of “Engravings,” as well as my translation:
