DESTA

Daughter, Desta, born in exile,
Come home for a first time.
Meet your grandmother
Her family, her neighbors --
Your family, your neighbors,
Your country, our home.
Please eat
These vegetables and meat
And a special treat of wild roots.
Or have I spoiled you?

No, Daddy, I love this.
But we need windows.

OUR LANGUAGE

Welcome
To our language.
Taste
the sauce
With spicy melted
Butter,
Berbere pepper
And sea salt.
The bones are big
Not only for the flavor.
Take them
Like communion.

KNOWLEDGE

First the earth, then the plow:
So knowledge comes out of knowledge.
We know, we don't know.
We don't know we know.
We know we don't know.
We think
This looks like that --
This lemon, that orange --
Until we taste the bitter.

LEARNING FROM HISTORY

We learned from Marx and Lenin:
To be equal trim your feet
For one-size-fits-all shoes.
We made their mistakes, too.

Equally, we all make mistakes.
The evil is in not being corrected
Aren't we known
By what we do, undo and do again?

THE NEXT GENERATION

Well traveled and knowing many languages,
The next generation arrives.
Let's rise to the occasion.
Welcome, Vielkomen, Bien Venue, Ben Venuto!
Let's bathe your tired feet with hot water
And serve the best injera, vegetables, meat and drink.
Take this warm, white gabi to wrap yourself in.
Let's walk the mountains and valleys
Given to us, we give them to you --
History and culture to read,
A legacy to satisfy your needs
And to share, even with strangers --
On one condition:
Don't give it all away.

injera -- traditional bread
gabi -- traditional blanket/cloak

Reesom Haile
translated by Charles Cantalupo

After twenty years in exile and working in many countries around the world as a civil servant, Reesom Haile returned to his country and began writing poetry only three years ago. Since this time, he has produced a large body of work in print and on the Internet that has enormous popular appeal in Eritrea. To stroll with Reesom Haile down any street at any hour in Asmara, Eritrea's capital, is to be approached by the young and old and people from all walks of life who are delighted to quote his lines back to him. Writing in Tigrinya, he joins a growing movement of African authors who are writing in their own African languages. This rise of African vernaculars, paralleling the rise of independent and democratic African nations, promises a 21st century that will be the African century for literature.

Reesom Haile's personal Web site offers selections from his work in Tigrinya (& in RealAudio).

He was the organizing chair of Against All Odds: African Languages and Literatures into the 21st Century, the conference and festival in Asmara, Eritrea, January 11-17, 2000. Presented in African languages and including Europhone languages, Against All Odds was cerebral, emphasizing scholarship and the highest critical standards, yet simultaneously celebratory, creating an environment in which African languages, performances -- music, film, drama, readings & dance -- and visual arts are a constant presence. In a new spirit of Afro-optimism that upholds the values of democracy, gender equity, hard work, honesty, independence, sacrifice, tolerance, self-reliance, children's rights, safety, and environmental awareness, Against All Odds offered a powerful yet festive demonstration that the creation of a socially just and humane society in the future need not be “against all odds,” as historically it has been in Africa and throughout the developing world.

You can find Cantalupo's work in these places on the Net:

• He edited a special section of African Foregrounds, including his English translations of another group of Tigrinya poems by Reesom Haile & his interview with Ngugi wa Thiong'o, for Left Curve No. 23.
• Excerpts from Anima/l Wo/man and Other Spirits are at Light and Dust Poets.
• Wo/Man is posted at the Penn State site for international travel/study programs.
• “Ode of a New National” is in Issue 7 of Salt Hill.
• “On a Road to Kilmanjaro” appears in the inaugural issue of Brevity, a journal for short creative non-fiction pieces.