(For Zuleikha)<\/p>\n
By Wale Adebanwi<\/p>\n
\u201cSoomaali been ma maahmaah do<\/i>\u201d
\n[Somalis don’t say a false proverb] \u2013 a Somali proverb<\/p>\nI<\/h2>\n
He bathes his soul in
\nthe waters of her eyes.
\nHe washes his sorrows in
\nthe oceans of her dreams.
\nHe takes the pains of her joys
\nand embraces the ease of her agonies.<\/p>\n
Who\u2019s left for the pirates of Mogadishu
\nto take hostage
\nafter she has hosted the age in her loins?
\nAfter his loitering in the loins of her horn,
\nhorn of her loins,
\nthighs of treasure, and treasured thighs?<\/p>\n
Her laughter, his metaphor;
\nHer giggle, his irony.
\nStraddling between the terrific and the terrifying
\nin a city that the world has left behind,
\na city without memory,
\nand a memory without a city.<\/p>\n
Here, the Most Merciful
\nis suborned by the Most Merciless.
\nAnd the cries of the muezzin,<\/i>
\ntorture the souls of the soulless,
\neven as they chant, \u201cAllahu Akbar<\/i>!\u201d<\/p>\n
How can you find joy
\nin a desperate town that has lost its essence?
\nWhat can poetry do, where blood is verse?
\nWhat can the hijab<\/i> hide that is left unrevealed
\nby death and destruction?<\/p>\n
So,
\nwill she listen to some Somali praise poems
\nfor her own sake, or for the sake of the forgotten nation?
\nWhen the Indian ocean washes into the Arabian sea
\nin the port city of Berbera,
\nor the port town of Barawa,
\nwhat shall the Cal Madow Mountains
\nsay to the eastern wind blowing west?
\nHasn\u2019t this honey of Africa,
\nbeen mistaken for the Horn of the continent?<\/p>\n
Somalia, the beauty of nature\u2019s gift
\nhugs the present rifts that cut through your ancient entrails.
\nThe longest coastline in the dark continent,
\nwith its plateaus, plains and highlands
\nwhere the plain and the high disembark into terrains
\nthat rush even saints to pleasurable heights.
\nThe mountains holler at the virgin gold:
\n\u201cMay you never hear a false Somali adage.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Isbarasho horteed hay nicin”<\/i>
\n[Before you get to know me, do not dislike me]<\/i><\/p>\n
Look to your heritage, maiden,
\nDo you not evoke the valiancy of your ancients?
\nOf the Sultanate of Adal, or the Warsangali Sultanate
\nAnd the Gobroon Dynasty, founded by the soldier,
\nIbrahim Adeer, whose progeny, in the golden age,
\nforced the Omani empire into tributary payment?<\/p>\n
Ever beheld the old beauty of the land,
\nof the Eyl castle,
\nof Bosaso before it was bombarded,
\nor of Merca, Somalia\u2019s Mecca, which kisses
\nthe Indian ocean on its expansive rear?
\nHaven\u2019t you watched men drooling,
\nwhen faced with the comely faces
\nof Garoowe\u2019s cherubic girls,
\nor Kismayo\u2019s seraphic ladies,
\nwhose covered ears are the playthings of orient princes?<\/p>\n
And you ask: when did history
\nrefuse the Somali praise poem,
\nwhile turning bullets into the
\nhistoriographies of terror and anomie?<\/p>\n
Do I know?
\nDo I know how they forged mayhem
\nfrom the beauty that nature gifted them?<\/p>\n
Or do you know?
\nDo you know how Barre, the self-styled Guulwade,<\/i>
\nand his artillery of horror, wired the terror of torture chambers
\nto the laps of maidens,
\nwhen men became dogs in the femurs of disobliging women?<\/p>\n
Can you forget the Duub Cas<\/i>,
\nBarre\u2019s atrocious swine
\nthat brought a proud people to their knees,
\nproclaiming, \u201cI came to power with a gun; only the gun can make me go\u201d?
\nBut when the gun came to town,
\nDidn\u2019t he flee, son of a gun,
\nto the land of manic-heroes?
\nRemember how the bard quipped:
\nA swine runs from the Indian ocean
\nto his dog-hosts in the Atlantic!
\nOceans swim for oceans; oceans swim into oceans.
\nBetween the Lagos and Mogadishu of Barre\u2019s age,
\ndogs lost to the swine in the dark tragi-comedies
\nof the darkened continent.<\/p>\n
Didn\u2019t the ancients warn that
\nit is men who do not know about war, who rush to it?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But come, Z, leave the past to pass
\nCome! Dance to the tonalities of Mogadishu Manifesto
\ncomposed to the tune of freedom,
\nof a liberated people bonding beyond the bondage of history.<\/p>\n
Dance! Frolic too to the melody of minds.
\nThrow your salsa at the tango of bodies.<\/p>\n
Boggie! Boggie down to the tension of muscles
\nYou, who tears up to the jingle of jazz.
\nIn your synchronic palpitation to the
\nmelodic cadences of bodies,
\nconfess Richard Francis Burton\u2019s summation on your people,
\na nation of bards<\/i>.
\nOr didn\u2019t the British explorer say that yours are a people
\nwho savor harmonious sounds and poetic expressions?
\nTake his poetry, give sound to it!<\/p>\n
You have risen, risen beyond the felonious collage of crazed rulers;
\nYou have mixed the Ox with the Bridge in the imperial enclaves;
\nYou have floated, floated above the torrid lessons of spilled bloods,
\nthe blood-stained heritage of pirates
\nof the treacherous oceans,
\nand their armored fleets.<\/p>\n
Your ancients are right still:
\n\u201cSorrow is like rice in the store;
\nif a basketful is removed everyday,
\nit will come to an end at last.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dance, dance still.
\nHop to the pentatonic songs of your culture;
\nSeize the fifth pitch of the octave
\nAnd twist your waist to your batar<\/i> drum,
\nOr let him teach you the rhythm of his own bata<\/i> drum.<\/p>\n
Dance, dance still
\nHold your hand to the Eastern,
\nraise your elbow to the West.
\nIn the patchwork of rhymes
\nyou shall find the tonalities waiting,
\nwaiting to chant to your splendor.<\/p>\n
Waiting, waiting in your dreamland eyes
\nwaiting, waiting in your supple mind
\nwaiting, waiting wrapped around your inflamed flesh
\nwaiting still.
\nLike a lady,
\nMogadishu waits for the dawn
\nof a new order, not of bullets
\nbut of ballots,
\nwaiting for a voice, for votes,
\nwaiting for slogans at campaign rallies,
\nrallies of citizens, for citizens and by citizens
\nWhere the fundamentals are about liberties, not faiths,
\nGaroowe waits too, like the
\nrest of the Indian ocean, like you,
\nwaiting to dance
\nstill waiting\u2026.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now that coquetry is
\n transformed into poetry
\nlet the songstress surrender
\n herself to the pianist.<\/p>\n
The pianist, the lyricist of tones
\n touching black, clicking white
\nalternating and balancing sonic keys
\n atop the giant piano.<\/p>\n
The songstress devours the pianist
\n with her eyes, her eyes the color
\nof dark honey, with their permanent mixture
\n of temptation and errant danger, and
\ntheir sharp intensity that sometimes collapse into
\n watery majesty….<\/p>\n
It is the songstress
\n that purrs first and stretches in
\n simultaneous intensity.
\n The pianist only moans, his magic
\n already claimed in tones.<\/p>\n
The laconic iciness to her,
\n before the pianist touches the tones,
\n disappears in the jingle of vibrations,
\n audible only to the intoned,
\n even before she opens her mouth.<\/p>\n
He starts with her hair,
\n for he was the low C,
\n which the masters consider the dividing line
\n between true basses and bass-baritones.
\n But he doesn’t end with her delicate toes,
\n for they are too tonal and he is hesitant about a solo.<\/p>\n
As the chorus waits
\n he terminates his passionate search,
\n banishing inharmonicity by striking the Middle C,
\n the piano’s middle ground.
\n His wounding majesty embracing
\n the work of art,
\n the art, the work of the Master Sculptor,
\n the one who lavishes beauty only on the chosen.<\/p>\n
The aroma of feelings, and the aromatic mien
\n of a possessing passion, lifts the tones to higher decibels
\n as the songstress’s voice reaches a crescendo,
\n she brushes her hair to the rising octave,
\n and playfully bruises her laps as she raises
\n her head to the Soprano C.<\/p>\n
When the rhythm is threatened,
\n the pianist does not heed,
\n but the songstress has stopped singing,
\n she is only humming the last lines in a repetitive encore.<\/p>\n
The pianist is seeking the songstress’s enflamed eyes
\n asking whether she desires instrumental accompaniment,
\n a cello, a flute or a three-string banjo.<\/p>\n
But, in the moment, beyond accompaniments, she’s standing
\n before stanzas
\n between stanzas
\n beyond stanzas
\n within stanzas
\n the pianist’s stanzas.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My water falls
\nLike the gushing waters at Ipole Iloro
\nCascading down with majestic musicality in the African rainforest
\nSmoothening the rocks hewed into
\nThe entrails of nature like a practiced craftsman<\/p>\n
Who lodged these torrents in the heart of the forest,
\nin the recesses of nature?<\/p>\n
It was a rainy day, but she was not draining.
\nDid she realize:
\nWhen she allowed herself a shower
\nBy the feet of the gushing waters
\nthat her satin clothe hugged her vital statistics<\/p>\n
like an invite to his vitality?<\/p>\n
Climbing mountains, descending valleys
\nHer skirted self must take care
\nNot to slide into the tempting entails of nature,<\/p>\n
nurtured by the picturesque ambience of a begotten countryside<\/p>\n
When next she visits Ipole
\nWill the water still fall
\nOr would she let the oro+<\/i>
\nSketched into the landscape of Ipole speak only to the forest?<\/p>\n
*Oro <\/i>(Yoruba) \u2013 <\/i>word<\/p>\n
*These poems are from an unpublished collection, \u201cConstant Mirages and other Love Poems\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
*Mogadishu Blues (For Zuleikha) By Wale Adebanwi \u201cSoomaali been ma maahmaah do\u201d [Somalis don’t say a false proverb] \u2013 a Somali proverb I He bathes his soul in the waters of her eyes. He washes his sorrows in the oceans of her dreams. He takes the pains of her joys […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1887,"parent":229,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1397","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1989,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1397\/revisions\/1989"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}