MEKDES JEMBERU
City chicken
All night the city chicken crows…
so slick and smart
that dawn or dusk…so what?
brave bird…tradition pah!
why should he care…?
so this is what the city chicken says
“cockadoodledoo!” he cries…impatient
for the waking hour…to herald day
“I’m living for myself…why give a fig for time?
who gains…by suiting others?
I’m not the embers in the dung…I don’t sleep nights away
a fuddy-duddy cock…a bumpkin chicken
boasting dawn is here!…I wasn’t always shrewd
in fact, for ages I was one of the thicky ones
you know, those roosters who go fizzle, pop…and ramble on
about the dawn…lordy, where has night gone now?”…
so crows the city chicken….all long-night long
jolting every sleeper…..out of sleep
and when the day approaches
when sky reddens
and time is getting out of bed…
when dawn bells ring…
then our restless city chicken….well, he sleeps on his two feet
collecting all the grains he’s scratched during the night…
into his dreams
The man who dies complaining
Half his life he spends regretting his bad luck
admiring others on the up
trampling, scratching whatsoever’s in the way
of his heart’s desires…his lucky day…
mission accomplished, he shoots up high
to thunderous applause, great joy
he’s made a quantum leap! he’s reached the top
forgetting where he started from
a cataract of comforts films his eyes and mind
he lolls amid the sated snoring crowd
so blinded by a life of luxury and ease
he does not see the morning come
now here he is complaining, clutching, tumbling
out of the tall tree he slept in…
what awful luck…
note: to “sleep in a tree” is an Ethiopian expression meaning to be successful and powerful, due to political favours etc.
(translated by Fasika Ayalew & Chris Beckett)
MEKDES JEMBERU is a popular Ethiopian poet and founder of the Ethiopian Women Writers Association. In the late 1990s, she helped to organise an anthology of women’s writing, entitled Egna (We). Her own poetry collections include Muga (2008) and Enbassel (2016). Her wonderful poem The home I left behind was published in Asymptote Journal in Jan 2018 and a recording of Fasika Ayalew reading the Amharic original is available online: https://www.asymptotejournal.com/search/?query=mekdes+jemberu