from The Nomads, My Brothers, Will Drink from the Big Dipper

Abdourahman Waberi


The Elixir of Exile

is going to Carthage to help understand
Djibouti
is the elsewhere saving the here
and now for happy days ahead
while waiting for time's salve
on scar-scalds of space

 



Here Is

where you hear the vibrato of Oum Kalthoum
where you harbor doubts about the Good Lord
and faceless neighbors
and where you'll swear to me to have heard the ghost
of the happy traveler
while waiting to drown your distress
                         in glasses
                         the color of pus 





Ai-yai-yai

the eye drinks, doesn't merely see
the eye grows quicker than the finger
achieves negative exploits
and even positive ones, agreed!
the eye perceives all around the hand of God
like silk the eye caresses things
man dies seated
upright or stretched out on earth hands crossed
feet in front and body stiff
life steals away like a thief 





Sketch II

repetition affirms identity
by seizing again
and not by imposing a rainbow
(that necktie of cosmic wedded bliss)
equally fleeting as fair 


translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson

Read the original in French

Listen to the poems read in the original French by Nancy Naomi Carlson:

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 do not exist in English (e.g., the nasal vowels, as well as the crisper vowels). The following was my sound map for the first part of "Ai-yai-yai," as well as my translation:

l'oeil boit, ne voit pas simplement
l'oeil croît plus vite que le doigt 
développe des exploits en negative 
et même en positif, oui ! 

the eye drinks, doesn't merely see
the eye grows quicker than the finger
achieves negative exploits
and even positive ones, agreed!

Abdourahman Waberi is a prize-winning writer from Djibouti whose work has been translated into a multitude of languages. These poems come from Les nomades, mes frères, vont boire à la grande ourse (The Nomads, My Brothers, Will Drink from the Big Dipper), his only collection of poetry. Muslim by birth, Waberi writes about nomadic life, colonial and postcolonial hardships, exile, Jewish writers, the Arabic language, and Djibouti's harsh climate. Most importantly, these poems, like his novels, short stories, and essays, carry the important message of tolerance. He is an assistant professor of francophone literature at George Washington University.

Nancy Naomi Carlson has received grants from the NEA, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County. She has authored three books of poetry and four books of translations, including Hammer with No Master (Tupelo Press, 2016), translations of René Char, which was a finalist for the CLMP Firecracker Poetry Award, and The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper (Seagull Books, 2015), translations of Djiboutian poet Abdourahman Waberi, which was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award. Her work has appeared in such journals as APR, Boulevard, The Georgia Review, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. Seagull Books will publish her co-translation of The Dancing Other, a novel by Suzanne Dracius from Martinique, in January 2018, Naming the Dawn by Abdourahman Waberi in the spring, and her second full-length collection of non-translated poems in fall 2018.