Madre Africa Mother Africa

Madre Africa

Culla umana!
baobab dell'anima,
nelle tue savane
e sacre foreste
danza la morte. 
 
Si sente l'eco, l'urlo
della Madre che
consegna diamanti
e riceve carri armati.
 
Oh moribonda
terra, per decenni
saluta gli anziani
che portano con sé
i tesori ancestrali.
 
Quando sarà l'alba
della generosa
Madre Africa?
 

Mother Africa

Cradle of mankind
baobab of the soul,
in your savannahs
and sacred forests
death dances.
 
You hear the echo, the scream
of the mother
who delivers diamonds
and receives armoured tanks.
 
O dying land,
that for decades
has met the elders,
the elders who keep
the ancestral treasures.
 
When will dawn break
for generous
Mother Africa?
 

This small poem is deceptively simple. Its succinct, almost dry, statements convey enormously rich ideas about Africa. Our task was to retain the delicate understatement of the original.

As you’ll see, we followed Andre’s literal version exactly for the first stanza – which made life easy! And we did little to the second stanza, other than adding the idea of mother Africa ‘delivering’ diamonds, which seemed rather apt. The trickiest stanza was number three as, in the original, there’s a great deal of ambiguity about what exactly the land is doing with, or to, the elders. We tried to convey this ambiguity by using the verbs ‘met’ and then ‘keep’: the latter giving the sense of ‘holding on to’ and ‘preserving’.

Mother Africa

Cradle of mankind
baobab of the soul,
in your savannahs
and sacred forests
death dances.
 
You hear the echo, the scream
of the mother who
gives us diamonds
and receives armoured tanks.
 
Oh moribund
earth, for decades
greets the elderly
who take with them
ancestral treasures.
 
When will there be a dawn
for the generous
Mother Africa?
 

Original Poem by

Ribka Sibhatu

Translated by

André Naffis-Sahely with The Poetry Translation Workshop Language

Italian

Country

Eritrea