Africa News Service (Durham)
Tamela Hultman
3 January 1993
(Page 2 of 2)
Now, in a break with centuries of history, Somalia's poets have fallen silent.
Before Siad Barre's overthrow last year in a mass uprising, oral traditions were already in decline. The combined pressures of increasing poverty and political repression sapped energies, dampened creativity and curbed the free expression upon which poetry had thrived.
Andrzejewski predicts that in the future, poetry as a living art will be confined mainly to texts of work and dance songs, anecdotal narratives, and children's lore. But in a more optimistic mood, he believes that an improvement in Somalia's material situation will permit a flowering of written literature, including poems, short stories, novels and literary scholarship.
For the moment, though, Somalia's rich civilization is obscured by images of human suffering. In the language of modern media, Somalis are either victims or thugs, passive or drug-crazed. And the exquisite sound of poetry has been drowned by the vulgar thunder of guns.
Pierce the Sky
Somalis have long debated the merits of a nomadic, pastoral existence versus those of a settled agricultural community. In this excerpt from a Somali poem, a nomad explains his decision to return to his herds after a brief try at farming:
It is said that one cannot pierce the sky to get rain for one's garden,
Nor can one drive the farm, as one drives animals, to the place where the rain is falling.
Worst of all, one cannot abandon one's farm, even though barren, because all one's efforts are invested in it.
The farmer, in counter argument, replies: A man with no fixed place in this world cannot claim one in heaven.
From AFRICA NEWS, December 21, 1992-January 3, 1993
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