British Somali poet Warsan Shire
what they did yesterday afternoon
they set my aunts house on fire
i cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
i called the boy who use to love me
tried to ‘okay’ my voice
i said hello
he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?
i’ve been praying,
and these are what my prayers look like;
dear god
i come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.
later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.
Warsan Shire (1988 – ), from her Blog
This poem seemed so right to feature as a contrast to the poem I featured earlier today by the American Kitty O’Meara. I so appreciate how O’Meara’s poem looks at our current Covid-19 crisis through the lens of hope. That is such an important singing in a dark and bewildering time. But important also, is the singing that is also more of a cry. That names the dark. And as Canadian poet Patrick Lane says so movingly in his brilliant poem False Dawn: That’s the hard part. Knowing the darkness is there and singing anyway.
And Warsan Shire’s poem so speaks to the dark through the eyes of an African woman but also sees the dark that is everywhere in the world. The hurts everywhere. The human hurts., The ecological hurts. And it may be an irony that the human hurt of Covid-19 may in the very short-term heal some of the ecological hurting on this dear and precious planet but how can we make that a lasting healing?
Oh, how I can hear these lines translated today as a cry to the impact of Covid-19:
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.
The title, Singing in Dark Times, for my ongoing series, restarted after a three year gap, comes from an epigraph to the poem Motto by German poet Bertolt Brecht: In the dark times/Will there also be singing?/Yes, there will be singing/About the dark times. And as part of this series I am happy to once again feature Warsan Shire. What an extraordinary woman she is. Born in Kenya to two Somali parents and brought to the U.K. a year later, she is now a celebrated poet and activist. What a voice she gives to so many displaced people, especially women. She was appointed London’s Young Poet Laureate in 2014 but became even better known, especially on this side of the Atlantic, when Beyonce featured her lyrics in her recording, Lemonade, in 2016. And in 2017 Penguin released Modern Poets 3 – Your Family, Your Body which features Shire, along with Sharon Olds and Malika Booker.
To celebrate Warsan some more I am including her poem Backwards, featured by former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith in The Slow down podcast last year. What strikes me with this home is how literally it mirrors itself and embodies the idea of what it would be like to roll back time so bad things could be reversed, wouldn’t happen. This would work well for Covid-19! To hear Warsan read this poem, dedicated to her brother Saaid, in 2014 please click here.
Backwards
for Saaid Shire
The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.
He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life;
that’s how we bring Dad back.
I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole.
We grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear,
your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums.
I can make us loved, just say the word.
Give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent,
I can write the poem and make it disappear.
Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass,
Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place,
maybe she keeps the baby.
Maybe we’re okay kid?
I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love,
you won’t be able to see beyond it.
You won’t be able to see beyond it,
I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love.
Maybe we’re okay kid,
maybe she keeps the baby.
Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place,
Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass.
I can write the poem and make it disappear,
give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent,
I can make us loved, just say the word.
Your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums
we grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear.
I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole,
that’s how we bring Dad back.
He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life.
The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.
Warsan Shire from The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith, April 23rd, 2019