Ta'iyo Wow A to Z

Caalin, listen, I'm going to travel

From A to Z carried by language -

The alphabet, alive on the page.

 

I write the words and send them to you;

You sing to the wind and the crows as they fly

Carry my lines through the noonday sky

Chanting each to each. The ants

Become orators. The gossiping camels

Crowd the waterhole, eager for rumours.

 

Even the trees, as they rustle their leaves,

Are sharing a joke; the sheep and goats

Talk tough as they sniff out the latest news.

The hum of the breeze in the river-bed

Is the language of pride; the termites talk

With a tap and a touch; the clouds compose

Poems as only they can; the land

Speaks in prose of growth and gain

And the sound of rain in the season of rain

Rumbles like thunder and why this should be

Is something only the rain can explain.

 

I write these words and send them to you

To let you know that we live through language.

Without it - deformity, ugliness, illness;

Without it - no anchor for culture; without it

No making of maps, no naming of nations.

 

A man might boast of property, money,

Position, but if he's unable to write

He's a pauper. Caalin, listen, your pen

Is your wealth, you're less than nothing without it.

 

Ask the old Gods how our culture has grown.

Think back to the time when our language suffered

One onslaught after the other: invasions,

Armies crossing our borders, the songs

Our fathers once sang destroyed or derided,

Our epics fading in memory, even

Our idioms gradually losing their meanings.

 

Every lost syllable tells in my heartbeat,

Every lost line is a scar on my heart.

Poems go hand-over-hand to create

A chain of wisdom, a chain that goes

From strength to strength; when this was shattered,

When our chain of poems was broken and scattered,

We were left with nothing but fragments, nothing

But scraps of wisdom - our inheritance

Nothing more than a handful of images.

 

Our story - a story so ancient that only

The Old Gods recall it - was gone forever.

Our children will never recover that wisdom:

Our legends and myths and the words of the prophets...

 

Remember the time when a man from the north

Wrote a letter received by a man from the south

And the second man threw the letter away,

Since the first man's language was foreign to him?

 

Remember the time when a camel was owned

By two men who needed to talk things through,

So a third man came in as interpreter?

 

Remember how politicians decided

To give us a written language? Remember

The fighting and feuding, the shouting and swearing?

Ten years went by with nothing decided

Until someone in power said, ‘Latin!' and then

Somalia sat down and uncapped its pen.

 

I dreamed of that day! The pen and the page -

A poet's stock-in-trade. The choice

Finally made. The alphabet

Taking the first few steps of a journey

And never looking back. A new age

Of wisdom in poetry, yes, a new

Tradition! Go, now, and wake Sayid -

Give him the news, tell all the great

Poets our language lives again,

And this time written to last in lines

That can't be lost or thrown away.

 

Caalin, write lyrics, write epics, write verse

That beats in the brain and tells on the pulse;

Write poems of love, write poems that show

How myths can revive and language grow.

 

Enough! I've written all that I need

To write, except to praise the men

Who talked the language into being -

Statesmen, thinkers, poets, who gave

Somali poets a new way with words.

We could raise a statue to them and set it

Above the image of Jupiter...

Or perhaps we should honour them in poems

That use all the letters from A to Z.

 

Oh Caalin! Ta’ and waw [Caalin is the name of a friend; ta’ and waw are letters of the alphabet; the second given as it would be said in Arabic to fit the metre, they are equivalent to A and Z more or less]

Mention where I pass: [this is a reference to Caalin passing on the poem, mentioning what Gaarriye says in it]

The crows which fly

pass on news to each other.

The ants are orators.

And the complaining/murmuring camels,

when they are assembled for watering,

know among themselves the unconfirmed news/rumours.

The pasture [of soft plants] which you see

says joke[s] which it knows

for irony(?). [hoos-ka-tuur]

The bleating of the sheep and goats is speech.

They seek information [also] of each other through smell.

The dry river beds and the winds

cry out [as of a camel who has lost her calf; one might say groan here] with pride.

The termite communicates directly

with the back of its neck. [i.e. they tap each other on the back of the thorax]

The clouds in a way special [to them]

compose hees poems/songs.

The land speaks in prose.

The drops of rain in the dayr season

intend thunder. [foresee thunder, i.e. communicate that thunder is coming; a very positive image]

 

What [all this] demonstrates

[is that] language is a central support to life.

Without it, hunchbacks

and tumours would not be lacking. [i.e. there would be hunchbacks and tumours]

It [i.e. life] would not have quality.

Culture would not be planted.

Nations [lit. a nation] would not have been demonstrated/shown. [i.e. would not have been able to have been drawn up on a map]

Let any man be proud [i.e. boast all you like]

[but only] writing brings wealth.

 

If the pen is neglected,

if writing is left behind,

progress cannot be realized.

 

Ask Waaq and Tinniix and

Tincaaro.[these are the names of the pre-Islamic god/gods of the Somalis]

Just count the days.

Look back in history.

 

Oh my language!

How you lived in trouble and illness. [taws = cudur, xanuun]

How you survived calamity.

How the foreigners battered you

with tricks and cunning;

harmed your coming of age.

How the days wiped out the guiding gabay [a type of poem with a long line and used for serious topics]

[and] good proverbs.

And how my heart feels that.

How word[s] were destroyed.

How poetry, which is a central support

is among the wealth worked for which has been destroyed.

How from the way in which it is fashioned as following one to the other

your wisdom is missing;

lots of scattered bits [i.e. poetry is seen here as a whole string of poems each one connected into the whole but parts of this are missing from the past; we just have scattered fragments remaining]

 

How a story full of wisdom,

which [the] Torah doesn’t mention

and which a prophet has still not conveyed

has been abandoned and lost to you.

 

How your offspring have missed out on direction [i.e. on being guided on the right path]

and advice.

How a telegram sent by one person

was thrown away by the other.

And two who share a camel [i.e. two who are closely related]

needed a translator.

[Lines 61-64 refer to the language situation after independence, when British Somaliland in the north (which used English in administration) and Italian administered Somalia (which used Italian) united to form the Republic of Somalia. Mogadishu in the south became the capital and administrators from the north went there. Since Somali did not have an official writing system at this time written communication was in the European languages or Arabic. So if someone received something in English but knew only Italian it had to be translated (or might be just thrown away as in lines 61-2). The same people could speak to each other with no problems in their mother tongue, Somali.]

 

How the [process of developing a ] writing [system] for you [i.e. of the Somali language]

demonstrated / showed itself to be bother and erroneousness.

How it incited a severe competition

with each group just taking their own side [This refers to the protracted discussion about which writing system to use. There were three possibilities: Arabic, Latin or Cismaaniya which had been invented ca. 1920 and had been used, particularly in the 1950s by one of the main political movements prior to independence. No decision was made on the choice of script during the 1960s after independence because of the difficulty of coming to that decision. The military regime decided to use Latin in 1972. Some people acknowledge that this was the only good thing they did.]

 

My God! The way I wanted it. [i.e. here he is referring to the fact that he wanted the language to be written]

Now you’ve been honoured with that [i.e. ‘the way I wanted’, you’ve been honoured with having been written]

and [things other than] general sickness and neglect

have been chosen today and so

Oh Ta’ make haste. [NB this is my reading!]

Take steps today. [i.e. set out on your journey(?)]

Your wisdom is a deep ravine.

 

Support the tradition.

Go directly to the Sayid [Sayid Maxamed Cabdille Xasan: religious and military leader of the Dervishes who fought the British and Italians and Ethiopians in the first two decades of the 20th century. He is regarded by many as the greatest poet to have lived.]

and make him realize [i.e. tell him] what you know.

Speak prose to Balaayacas. [a famous poet]

Wake up Haabiil. [another famous poet]

Pass on the state of abundance to Raage. [another famous poet]

Guide the spelling and

go beyond the number thirty. [i.e. go on to develop the written language now that you have the 30 letters]

Make geeraar poems with the ten vowels

and help them [i.e. the vowels] with the consonants.

 

Speech will not be added to. [i.e. I shall conclude here]

The committee that supported you, [a reference to the committee which worked on the writing of the language in the early 1970s and the people who worked on developing new vocabulary etc.. This was made up of some very respected poets and intellectuals, not just the politicians.]

and threaded letters on to you,

give it [i.e. the committee] thanks and congratulations.

The statue they deserve,

put it above Jupiter.