TRANSLATED BY TODD FREDSON
Two Poems
from 1: Polo Speaks
It is from the margins that we left
to invade the paper
like that paved route from Attécoubé
We are roughshod
The rain has done what it could
to pulp our notebooks
The city’s lines blur
Diesel has declared war on the sky
The cloud is white as a weapon
Come to Earth to face the lions
we fell into the wrong jungle
we blindfold ourselves
we cross the highway
we are the only ones who know Tomorrow’s address
when the Round-up1 arrives
we’ll wrestle
hands against claws
prey against hunters
daybreak dulled by hissing violence
in this jungle-festooned trench
from 3: The Clash
I replaced my blood with lava;
no one took my salivations seriously.
My pride towered over me:
I came to undress life.
Chock-full with madness’ sap the herbs
arranged the name Tomorrow.
Amid the sharp knives
and the shining bullets,
I would have wished for a beacon,
some improvised act;
during the drowning, a buoy,
or, even just to get right to it,
that much-feared clash
Tomorrow, too quickly you decreed
that we were sons of shopkeepers,
sons of cooks, maids,
little Fantines, seasonal help –
you think our words
sound like barking?
You’re getting ahead of yourself.
Lifted from the bed of speech,
words have opened a way.
The speaking remains our peril –
here we are dancing in your head –
let’s get your tongue out of that vaulted throne room.
1 There is one historic round-up, dating back to 1983, which Alpha Blondy evokes in his famous tune ‘Brigadier Sabari’. The capitalised ‘R’ in this context is a way of evoking in one word the police, their brutality, and these round-ups, which have long been used to disrupt street life and its required daily hustle.
The poems are excerpted from the collection Polo kouman/Polo parle by Henri-Michel Yéré. The book was a finalist for the 2023 Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique Noire. Part of what is compelling about the collection, and part of its dissent, is that the poems are written in both French and Nouchi. Nouchi is a language aggregated out of French, West African languages, onomatopoeias, slang, etc.; it began in the 1970s as an immigrant ‘pidgin’ dialect but has become so widely used as to be considered its own language. Yéré has written each poem in Polo kouman/Polo parle twice. Neither language is more original than the other; neither is more authoritative, per se – which should I translate from? That question of linguistic authority is central to the book.
Polo, the protagonist, is a young man born and bred in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. He’s seen the rougher side of Abidjanais life; he speaks Nouchi because he’s a child of the street. The name ‘Polo’ is a nod to John Pololo, who was a legendary figure of Abidjan’s street life in the 1980s and 1990s. Pololo was a rebellious figure, one of the inventors of the dancing style known as gnaman-gnaman, yet also a thug unofficially employed by President Houphouët-Boigny. The president used him and his friends to break student demonstrations regularly. Polo speaks to Demain/Devant – in other words, his own future – and Demain speaks back. Words are like weapons in Polo’s mouth, and Demain/Devant matches his tone. Therefore, they clash. The poems here are from three of the book’s four sections.
Henri-Michel Yéré? poète et aussi sociologue qui écrit à propos de l’appropriation culturelle
From Salam to Gaza: Focus on Dissent and Resistance
MPT’s July issue ‘Salam to Gaza’ spotlights poetry of dissent featuring Jennifer Manoukian’s translations of Missak Manouchian published in English for the first time, Cristina Viti’s translations of Batool Abu Akleen, a radical young voice from Gaza, a poem by Hussein Bhargouthi translated by Suneela Mubayi. Also: poems by Henri-Michel Yéré, translated by Todd Fredson from French and Nouchi, a new translation of Yi Sang by Jack Jung, an essay by Raul Zurita translated by Jessica Sequeira, and prose-poems by Afrizal Malna translated by Daniel Owen. All this and much more in the new issue of the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation.
La CoUrBE du CUBE 