hey, are you anunuebe, the thorny one
who allows no one else to rest
where you stand, you take up all our space
always making a face
looking for a fight
like you and peace are in the ring, they’d say
you’re always listening out for gossip
when good fortune comes to others, you make that face
when good comes to you, you warp your face like the backside of a pot
like you and good things are enemies, they’d say
….
let me ask you, are you anunuebe, the thorny one
so we know who to avoid
look at your hands, no birds perch on your branches
look at your feet, no ants crawl through your roots
and worst, it seems you have an issue with the dibia, the native doctor, too
that’s why I say let me ask, are you anunuebe
Anunuebe is a tree of awesome and terrible power. No birds perch on its branches and even the dibia, the native doctor, approaches with caution. In everyday Igbo speech, anunuebe is also a name for a troublesome person, someone who picks fights with everyone, who isn’t even pleased with their own good luck. This poem speaks to one such troublesome person. In translating the poem into English, we asked ourselves whether we should include the word ‘tree’ somewhere, to make this association clear. But the poem is addressed to a person, not a tree, so we chose to bring this cultural information in more subtly, following the images of the original poem: ‘your hands, your branches, your feet, your roots’. ‘Thorny one’ was the name we landed on to convey the qualities of this troublesome individual, but we wanted to keep ‘anunuebe’ too, as no translation would do it justice, and we would never want to test the wrath of this fearsome tree.
Miriam Nash
Workshop Facilitator
