Kala Uur Separate Beings

Separate Beings

[Of] separate minds / hearts’

Translator’s note:

Weedhsame is a young Somali poet known for his technical mastery, able to write everything from serious traditional forms to popular lyrics. Translator Martin Orwin began by telling us that this poem, written in the work-song metre Haanta (associated with churning the Haan, or milk vessel), is somewhere in-between – a romantic piece that also has unexpected depths and original imagery. The first three lines took us a disproportionate amount of time as we debated how to translate ‘Naftan’ – which links to breath and is here distinct from the heart. Was it the speaker’s ‘life’? Their ‘self’? Finally, a workshop member suggested ‘spirit’ – of the mind but also airy and without the religious baggage of ‘soul’. The verbs ‘howling’ hovering’ and ‘ensnared’ were all also hard won, but together create a picture of a broken creature caught in the heart’s trap.

‘Your gloating is a raised stick’ was also an image that needed a lot of unpacking. Originally it was just a stick. But we heard how Somali men often carry a stick in the street and might raise it to deter thieves. Without adding ‘raised’ we felt the implied threat dissipated. We were also interested in the shift of power between the genders as the woman raises this stick.

It was interesting to hear how Weedhsame’s interest in science informed some of the beautiful imagery here – the idea of passion taking hold in every ‘cell’ of the body; the urur constellation, in which he seems to immortalise his love, turning her to starlight like an ancient God. We all also agreed on the power of those final last lines, which lift the poem from being a simple love lyric towards a more profound, universal truth. Those in power do not see or value those they command. Humanity must turn its gaze from the unobtainable, and care for what we have.

Clare Pollard, Poet Facilitator