Introduction to Somali Poetry

By Martin Orwin (Modern Poetry in Translation, New Series, No.17, 2001)

Your loved ones stabbed and stabbed by spears go'e this is not

In your interest

With strife and sorrow from all sides stinging you naive person

Go'e this is not in your interest

Staggering exhausted you lack the camel's back

Skin carrier fell from all that harms him and died

To Daabad trained for the bristly blanket and halter

That you no longer say he's gone and get up

This is not to your advantage or interest

Sharing the fireside with worries that weaken you

This is not to your advantage or interest

All that i tell you in my testament and that

Which through luck passed you by and the trials that i

Have yet to point out to you as i say

Calm down go'e this is not in your interest

A sky has dropped rain for Daylo and the lamb

The times of spring Awl Daydad Dirirad

Have shed showers covering the whole land

The goodness for the season of Dayr and there where

The people are spread the herds are grazed

The communal encampment the hawd's pastures

The place where all points to milk full udders

The meadowland views unspoilt clumps of grass

Dihi in fresh growth the plant life and verdure

The mossy shoots with roots reaching deep

The branches the duur tree stretches out

All livestock grazed on abundant lushness

Where the encampments old and news know nothing of parasites

Dividing up this whole country go' its not in your interest

Poverty prevents the production of milk

The naked now are hollow cheeked

The throat and belly fail to function

The gullet is grilled

Searching in strange lands dejected in the desert

Living with infidels begging from foreigners

Oh naive one it's not in your interest

The children attend school for learning's light

Let them reap its rewards is society's unhitching

The hobble of poverty

Grinding knowledge into the grave it's not in your interest

Ready only for himself he who acts solely to his own ends

Won't even thread a needle for you he's yesterday's man

The one from before who held a whip for you

The man who with the dagger would disembowel dependents

Plunge it into you you remember the difficulties he brought

He now refutes you as he sets to peel

The fibres to make a rope to tie you up

The lying MP those satanic elders

The subjugators making signs secretly known to each other

Those calling turn from the path the breakers and brokers

Tearing things apart

That they still sport the turban you respect

Wield a leather whip as you bow down behind

Go'e it's not in your interest

Those who together milk their camels Deleb Diirran and Doorran

Those who produce the fruits of the farms in community by

The rivers

The trapper and arrow hunter of little means

The person beyond borrowing even one thing

The sailor of the seafaring boats setting the mast

The owner of tall buildings trading from them

Those flowing back to the bush and the neighborss of the town

One people sharing creating no problems

To face away from each other is sulking and resentment

Walls separating society screens blocking them off

Delineation of nature splitting up grazing

Closing off this region enclosing that with strict borders

Hobbling folding up separating in hate of their skin

Dispersing them and setting out individual spaces

Leaving everything behind sending apart

Dismantling agreements each aiming their own way a very

Long time

Piercing peeling back then putting in watering each other's

Spite and jealousy

Bringing people to hate such that fire is not held for another

Making them sleep by the side of badness unblamed

That they scatter apart you'll say to them it's not in your interest

The killing happens the destruction of the lands

Creation's burial refugees' flight from the country

As outlaws pass among the people long suffering

Weak wretches

They enter the shade of the dead wood

The forest's has been destroyed by scorching sand

Rotten brush dense dead thicket

Silvered tree stumps calls of help help

Somebody help the women the children the frail

Licked by the red hot spears

The tank with lust to launch at even unpeopled places

The playful gun sight the hollow stocked gun

The kalashnikov the bomb the shortened jeep

The rolling mortars descending from the sky

Napalm peeling stripping your burnt skin

The antitankp10 ricocheting ring

The rpg7 the smaller bazooka

And the ammunition belt at the ready

The aloes with their troubles and painful injury

Standing unmilked and drinking their fill

Ready for destruction sent by death

And guns and gunpowder of satan it's not in your interest

Show-offs boasting sidling into a position

To metamorphose into meat eating animals

Slaughtering people brings no revulsion to them

Seeing the corpse's limbs

Searching for fat from the butchered and eliminating the weak

Peeling flesh and skin from the slayed women

And this blood flood in the river beds this is not in your interest

Feeling no nausea at the oozing water at the well

The sloppy mud and this wrongful matter

Swallow the worm don't look at the core

Come down like wild animals and every time

Do not refuse the snot and slime

Hold things in contempt and eat

Dead leaves and innards not good meat

This was the testament then of Koofil and Doofil

The ones I sent to hell and whose orders I refused

The lackey dogs

And those of their ilk saying here boy

You countered the contempt of their fathers with

It will not be tried on me

That they now dragy you down from there go'e it's not in your

Interest

If you fail to help the birth of a noble person

You might encourage with their first steps

If you fail to sympathise with the mother saying

The waterer she's tired

If you don't adorn the acacia tree

For the beautiful girl of good taste

If you fail to tease her and her husband with

Have fun on the honeymoon mat

Then rather than the groom of choice she's there for an old man

The celebrations the stamping feet the drumming the supplicating

The prayerful songs the accept us everlasting one

The waved spring flowers the weariness from clapping

Saying may he be exalted oh God save the king

Will all be for him

In ignorance all that comes from you is a crook always marries me

As do taboo fools of hell you marry the flunkeys

And the others ones equal in age and principles

Clawing compulsively up disreputable vagabonds

Parasites crawling among the crowds

Providing them shelter is your stupidity

Giving them the milking responsibility it's not in your interest

These lines in 'd' wisdom swelling

The poem with milk

Chosen Outstanding Support born of the finest camel colour

My gilded words a shawl of fine thread

Honey from Yemen this poem of God everlasting

Whose generosity has placed it in time

That i cannot forget until i lie in the grave

My poetic engagement the verse long lasting

That will remain whose kin i befriended

I mastered plaiting it as a wicker basket

With its lid and holder

The one awarded a degree and even a doctorate

Whose every metaphoric hole i learnt to stitch

I've not made it public these last few days

But now today and 'd'

And these sounds which seem strong support

For the astray this poetic argument

A religious warning to me Hirsi

Their responsibility i entrust to you

You will ring it and say go'e it's not in your interest

Chewing your bottom lip once more go'e it's not in your interest

Your enemy adding insult to injury once more go'e it's not in

Your interest

What is worst worsening for you it's no good and not in your

Interest

Carrion from a carcass is prepared for you go'e it's not in your

Interest

But if God the victorious leaves you in this life

Longer than the allotted span saying

Simply enjoy existence

Then this is mere borrowed time you soft person

Like donkeys you're kicking the pliable containers

This milking period is your colostrum

Beware of spills

You are ignorant this time

Of thoughts demanding considered contemplation

You are ignorant this time

Of a sharp piercing poetic testament

You are ignorant this time

Of my unswerving indispensible composition

You are ignorant this time

Of this peremptory seeker of virtue

You are ignorant this time

Of this companion to what future remains

You are ignorant this time

Of this emissary of honesty set on a solution

And you are ignorant this time

Of a body in a death twitch with a choice of good or bad

Which you give up on you just pass by

Who tells you movement is made unawares

To a malevolent nuisance

As you fall then dust down rise once more

Who winnows away from you the choicest of dreams

Who brings you distracting advice making you faint

Returning once more to tormenting mistakes

Go'e this is not in your interest

Returning once more to tormenting mistakes

Go'e this is not in your interest

Returning once more to tormenting mistakes

Go'e this is not in your interest

Returning once more to tormenting mistakes

Go'e this is not in your interest