V
Country so deserted it seems crowded.
The lack of conversation fills my days.
In the shady depth of the mothering glen
are moss hairs lit by the sun’s close gaze.
VI
The day gives the crisped hills a last caress.
A skein of geese undulates through the sky.
Here and there, an evergreen like a fire.
The clouds descend but find no place to rest.
VII
Come visit me. It’s psilocybin time,
the brambles hold their black constellations.
We can groan in night-long ruminations,
getting ‘lost in the unknown, famous light’.
VIII
In the tunnel of this overhung path
the starred moss deepens its luminous pile.
I pick up every stone I see, while
there’s still a chance some pretty feet might pass.
IX
I dream I am sailing into the sky.
The clouds clear and another Earth is there,
a pavilion where we sit together.
We can hear nothing but the butterflies.
X
Satellites scan the world’s inhuman shores.
The mind’s antipodes are still unknown,
but no boat will make that crossing. Alone,
you must step into the sea-monster’s jaws.
XI
A melody blows us over the lake.
We call goodbye in the growing dark.
When I turn, the clouds have a dragon’s face.
Entirety smoulders in every part.
XII
At the palace, the pavements and coiffeured trees
would quickly drive me to despair. Out here,
I stray through a withered chaos of leaves
where everything’s in perfect order.
XIII
Streamlets like schoolchildren hurry down rocks,
the rain spits in my face, the bare wind sings
something I can’t catch. In a dream, I watch
white egrets ascending and descending.
XIV
You can take your monatomic gold,
your organic wheatgrass (locally sourced!),
your chicken soup for the insatiable soul.
To live forever, just drink from the source.
XV
Another dream: I’m with Walt Whitman,
we are standing in a broad stream’s shallows.
His ankles pale, that loneliest of men
is telling me the secret names of the stones.
XVI
An object hums above the forest,
a shining sphere with no rivets or seams.
When I come to my senses, my mind clean,
I find I can’t account for several minutes.
XVII
Compose in darkness: yes. My eyes are clear
enough to discern a world’s death-rattle.
I’m so far out, I’d be invisible
was it not for the moon’s closed-circuit stare.
XVIII
I think of Chuang Tzu, the idiot’s post
that was the only job he’d ever had;
he fields another call, keeping a tab
on the tragic gestures of the willows.
IXX
In late December, the wrecked wood flowers.
Everything opens, unfurls its light
in the disused mansion at the river’s side:
our strange faces, the tips of our fingers.
XX
We have emptied these hands and cupped our minds,
made a salad from the garden’s choicest leaves,
left milk in saucers, tasted the breeze,
hailed the thunder. Now let the lightning strike.
THE GREAT FLIGHT
Refugee focus
RIBKA SIBHATU
Translated by André Naffis-Sahely
Ribka Sibhatu’s poem was based on the real-life events of the night of 3 October 2013, when a boat of migrants from Libya sank off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa. The boat had many Eritrean and Ethiopian passengers on board. Ribka met with one of the survivors and wrote this poem in Italian as part of her activism on behalf of refugees from East Africa and elsewhere. In exile from her native country for over thirty years, Ribka has become one of Eritrea’s most prominent voices. The poem was read out on Italian state radio in June 2015.
In Lampedusa
On 3rd October
a barge carrying 518 people
arrived in Lampedusa
Having survived a brutal dictatorship
and a journey full of pitfalls
they stood atop their raft in the dead of night
and saw the lights of the promised land
Believing their suffering had reached an end,
they raised a chorus and praised the Virgin Mary.
While waiting for those ships to rescue them,
men and women, children and grownups,
the sick and the healthy began to sing hymns!
ስምኪ ጸዊዐ መዓስ ሓፊረ፣
I wasn’t ashamed when I called out Your name,
ማሪያም ኢለ ኣበይ ወዲቐ:
I called out to Mary and didn’t fall
ስምኪ እዩእ’ሞ ስንቂ ኮይኑኒ:
Your name sustained me throughout my journey
እንሆ ምስጋናይ ተቐበልኒ!
and here is the grateful echo of the song I raise to thank you!
Suddenly the raft
started filling with water;
they began flashing
red lights to sound the alarm;
switched their lanterns on and off!
Alas, all was quiet on the island.
Meanwhile the water rose, stoking fears the ship would sink.
To send a distress call,
they set a sail on fire, and as the flames
began to spread, some frightened people
jumped overboard and tipped the boat.
They were all adrift in the freezing sea!
Amidst that storm, some died right away,
some beat the odds and cheated death,
some who could swim tried to help
some drowned using their last breath
to send messages back to their native land,
some called out their names and countries of origin
before succumbing to their fate!
Among the floating corpses
Mebrahtom raised a desperate cry
Yohanna! Yohanna! Yohanna!
But Yohanna didn’t answer;
all alone, and in
an extreme act of love,
she brought her son into the world,
birthing him into the fish-filled sea:
yet nobody in Lampedusa
heard the seven ululations welcoming his birth!
እልልልልልልልልልልልልልልል
Because after a superhuman struggle
Yohanna died alongside her son,
who never saw the light of day
and perished without even...drawing his first breath!
A baby died
drowned in the salty sea!
The baby was born and died
with its umbilical chord still unsevered!
A woman died while giving birth!
368 people died! 357 Eritreans died!
On 3rd October
3000 feet from Rabbit Island,
in the heart of the Mediterranean,
a tragedy struck the Eritrean people,
one of many they have endured.
FIVE ASSYRIAN IRAQI POETS
Translated by Jamie Osborn and Nineb Lamassu, with Cambridge Student PEN
The Assyrians are an ancient people with a cultural history dating back to the Assyrian Empire, 3,000 years ago and beyond. They have lived in parts of northern Iraq, Syria and Turkey for millennia, but during the last century of conflict in Iraq have suffered repeated massacres and persecution.
In November 2014, Cambridge Student PEN held a reading to mark the Day of the Imprisoned Writer. Following the reading, Nineb Lamassu came to us to ask for help for his people, the Assyrian Iraqis. They were the opposite of imprisoned, he said – or if they were imprisoned, it was an imprisonment in fear. They had been driven out of their homes by ISIS, and were living in dire conditions in flooded refugee camps. They had lost everything in a matter of hours. The poets among them had lost a life’s worth of books and manuscripts, resulting in intense psychological pressure. Nineb told us of how one of his friends had been sitting in the corner of his tent for weeks, without speaking.
The poets were still writing, often on sodden scraps of paper rescued from the flooding. They felt their suffering was not known to the world, and believed it was their role to represent that suffering in poetry. With Nineb’s help, Cambridge PEN secured and translated the poems written in the camps, and held a 24-hour solidarity vigil and reading of the poems in Cambridge. Representatives of British, Iraqi, Turkish, Kurdish, Israeli, Persian, even Brazilian and Trinidadian writing communities were present. Simultaneously, the Syriac Writers’ Union, the body for Assyrian poets, held a reading of the poems in the original Aramaic, which they were able to record and send to us, to screen in Cambridge. Rawand Baythoon, the President of the Syriac Writers’ Union, told us, simply, that ‘it has turned our sadness into happiness’, to know that the poems had reached so far.
While the Assyrians are a Christian minority, the writers of the Syriac Writers’ Union insist that their work is not intended to present a sectarian view, but is a cry of suffering from any and all victims of ISIS.
ABDALLA NURI
The Great Flight
Our name is the first wound
Rich and poor taking flight
Both in terror
Both under the same scorching sun
Moses did not leave his people
He led them to manna and died
Jesus didn’t leave his cross
He rose with courage and humility
When bombs fell on our homes
They soaked our soil with blood
They dried the song in the throat
Of the singing birds
Where are we going with tearful eyes
And our homes marked with a thousand ن
Kahramanat, Afrodite, Venus…
I feared for you Baghdede
For wolves roamed around your neck
Now
Nothing remains in my town
But ruined roads with stray dogs and cats
Searching for food
To fill their stomachs
Nothing remains in our homes
But looters and rotting heads
Nothing remains
Everything destroyed
But the barn-roof sky
Will give birth to that dawn
Nineveh will return and
Life will enfold our villages again
NOTE: ن (nun) is the first letter of the Arabic word for ‘Nazarene’ and is used by ISIS to mark out Christian properties to be seized. Unlike Masihee (Christian), Nazarene is usually derogative and also implies that the Assyrians are not an indigenous people of Iraq and Syria, but originate from Nazareth.
BAYDAA HADAYA
Severed Lips
They have changed my identity.
I was an Assyrian from Baghdede,
And now I am a refugee.
Wherever I go in this country of mine
I am required to prove that I am a refugee,
A refugee in my own country!
I will utter my words as a woman of Baghdede.
I will breathe them into an Assyrian breeze
Finding its way to St John’s Cathedral,
To check if the church is still intact
And the old people’s textile offerings still hang on the cross.
But why
Did they empty my town of its people,
Scatter them, beneath the sky?
Now the bell of St. John’s – without its cross –
Rings not to summon people to prayer
But to announce another death.
Birds no longer fly through my town,
Nor does water flow in its palms.
Incense no longer drifts from its churches.
The melody of its church bells
Is replaced with cries of lamenting mothers –
Whose lips they cut.
They severed their lips
To prevent them kissing the cross –
O, how they crucified Baghdede in front of its children.
BARZAN ABDUL GHANI JARJIS
My mother cried without tears
When she saw my naked sister in the rain,
My mother stripped her heart
And covered my sister with everything she had:
Love.
If you were to look up my mother’s heart in a dictionary
The definition would be:
Sadness and tears for a country,
Burden of five orphaned children,
And grief for a murdered husband.
Someone came into my dreams
And whispered a few words:
Whispers – of my mother, my sister and the soil of my town.
It was my father’s voice,
Imploring me to return to the soil that embraces his bones
So it could embrace mine too.
Will I breathe in the breeze of my town again?
Will I drink from Tigris’ waters again?
My soul hovers over my town
And my lips sing its songs.
My heart cries blood, and my soul
Runs like a madman,
Wishing an end to this, or to life.
ANAS AOLO
My Beloved Baghdede
Two eyes
Gaze with longing
One cries blood
The other, fire
Tears flood
Our eyes
And Baghdede is set ablaze.
When I dragged myself to abandon you
I pulled all the churches behind me
They followed me, tapped my shoulder
And asked me to return
To Baghdede
I replied
I have taken Baghdede with me
I carry it where it belongs
So that my heart throbs with its love.
Is this a nightmare or
Have I really fled my home
How could I have abandoned my memories.
Only now I realise
How heavy the crosses of your churches were
Oh how you carried everyone’s sins.
The day I fled my town, my beloved…
Every day I believe you are next to me
But you have changed…
You were big
I touch your hair
My beloved you are still beautiful
You still wear scarves
But here you are small
And your scarves are tents.
AMIR POLIS IBRAHIM
The Crucifixion of Baretle
My town was
Bound on the cross
They cut off its breast
(I suckled from there).
It didn’t cry.
They violated its purity.
It did not cry.
But my town cries blood
For its displaced children
And we cry blood for its love.
CARMEN BUGAN
In October 2013 I took my father, mother, sister and brother on a journey back in time to our Romania. By that time I had read a good part of my family’s secret police archive which I received from the Centre for the Study of the Archives of the Securitate (CNSAS) in Bucharest. Our family surveillance began in 1961 with my father before he was married, and ended (rich with material on the rest of us) when we emigrated to the US in 1989. Among the documents I had found a hand-drawn map of my father’s failed escape at the border between Bulgaria and Turkey in the Lesovo area in February 1965 (see next page). By 2014 my father was 79 years old and I wanted not only to trek the map made by the border guards but also to follow the map of his memory, the map of his face as he relived his story. I wanted to make together another map: the map of a journey as a free man. The poem ‘A Walk with my Father on the Iron Curtain’ came out of that experience.