Sauti? The Voice?

Sauti?

Shingo zetu zimechongoka
            asubuhi kuilekea
lakini usiku wasogea
            ukichimba misingi ya nyumba,
                      na ukuta wa dakika nyumba
                      kuizunguka.
 
Kifo kimeadhimishwa
na ule wakati uliotandazika
                      mpaka
kila cha zamani kimesahaulika
isipokuwa majani makavu yalokauka
Mitini, mara kwa mara, yakitingisika
 
   Ati n'nani aliyesikia sauti?
   Kama kwamba kuna mtu huko mbinguni
wa kutulipia damu yetu iliyomwagwa
            na kumwagika
 

The Voice?

Our throats sharpen
towards morning
but night approaches
      digging the foundations of the house
             and the wall of minutes
             that surrounds the house
 
Death is honoured
by time stretched out
until everything past has been forgotten
other than the leaves that dried
on the tree, that tremble, now and then
 
   Who would have heard the voice?
   As if there were a person in heaven
to pay for our blood that was poured
      and poured out
 

Another complex and suggestive poem by Alamin Mazrui, whose simple language holds great depths of thought and feeling.

We decided to retain ‘sharpen’ from the first line of Katriina’s translation because it kept the ambiguity of sharpen as in the pitch being raised and for its (hidden) suggestion of execution.

The poem appears to be referring to two different kinds of time: one an ancient, ancestral time (in the second verse) that’s placed against the menace and destruction of the ‘walls of minutes’ in the first.

A Voice?

Our necks have sharpened
            towards the morning
but the night approaches
            digging the foundation of the house(s),
                        and the wall of minutes
                        the house is surrounded by.
 
Death is celebrated/praised/honored
by that time that was spread out
                        till
each (thing) of the past has been forgotten
except for the dry leaves that dried
in the Tree, from time to time, moving/trembling
 
   And who would hear the voice?
   As if there was a person in the sky/heaven
to pay for our blood that was poured
                        and poured out
 

Original Poem by

Alamin Mazrui

Translated by

Katriina Ranne with The Poetry Translation Workshop Language

Swahili

Country

Kenya