Once upon a time I studied African history, policy and economics as an undergraduate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Although I was only there for a short time, it left a very positive and lasting impression on me. One of the things that really stood out about the School was its origins in the British Empire’s need for better understanding of the languages and cultures that were the furthest from its own. It felt like a bold statement of how success can be achieved through understanding and acceptance as much, if not more, than from shock and awe strategies.

The School has to have had one of the most diverse groups of people I have ever had the pleasure to work with. I’ll never forget how the discussions in the classroom would often continue afterwards downstairs in the dark and smoky school pub (with the Professor!) for hours and hours over tax-free pints of lager and stout. And who can forget the library stacks, absolutely filled with anything you could possibly want to know, all just next door to the ominous building that played a prominent role in the movie “1984”. Although I seriously considered attending SOAS to do my graduate work, I ultimately chose the London School of Economics, just down the road…

Well, I was just notified of an amazing program started by SOAS in 2004 called the Poetry Translation Centre. There is something really remarkable about the Arts Council England and how dedicated they seem to be to finding ways to enrich the English-speaking world with art.

I recently wrote about the tragic loss of tradition due to war in the Horn of Africa, where an oral tradition existed at whose centre was verse or poetry. However, finding this program on the SOAS site has restored my faith that people who care about poetry might also genuinely see the importance of capturing and passing along literature and traditions around the world.

This poem by Ismaciil Mire, a Somalian soldier who fought against the British in the early 20th Century, is particularly interesting and perhaps timely:

They Pounced at Dawn

Honestly, my wife, not one of my forefathers
Nor I have ever once traded with money.
Our ancestors always had camels,
And I got my share from the camel raids.
Only once I ventured where my father never went.
I loaded the camels; it took four nights to reach the village.
The minute I got to the gate of Burco with my goods,
The brokers pounced as if they knew I was coming.
As dawn broke, the sheepsellers set upon us.
Godless men gathered against us.
I was struck dumb when they prodded the sheep.
‘It’s worth this much’, ‘No it isn’t’, they haggled bluntly.
Their squabbling distressed me.
I trusted the man with the squint but he cheated me.
They tried to placate me with less than four shillings,
While I watched the hands that swindled me.
As for the sheep you’re all asking about, they are now with
men
Who deserve to be strung up on thorns by their heels.
All I was left with was rags and a stick.
Some men know more about money than me. Ask them!

The poems come in original text, literal translation, and final translation.

by MARVIN BELL

I DIDN’T SLEEP in the light. I couldn’t sleep
in the dark. I didn’t sleep at night. I was awake
all day. I didn’t sleep in the leaves or between
the pages. I tried but couldn’t sleep
with my eyes open. I couldn’t sleep indoors
or out under the stars. I couldn’t sleep where
there were flowers. Insects kept me up. Shadows
shook me out of my doziness. I was trying hard.
It was horrible. I knew why I couldn’t sleep.
Knowing I couldn’t sleep made it harder to try.
I thought maybe I could sleep after the war
or catch a nap after the next election. It was
a terrible time in America. Many of us found
ourselves unable to sleep. The war went on.
The silence at home was deafening. So I
tried to talk myself to sleep by memorizing
the past which had been full of sleepiness.
It didn’t work. All over the world people
were being put to sleep. In every time zone.
I am not busy sleeping, obsessively one might say.
I resolve to sleep again when I have the time.

One hundred twenty-five copies of this poem were printed in honor of the poet’s reading at Prairie Lights in winter 2006, and I have one.

I lie awake at night staring at the verse. The paper reflects the light. I feel like each review should help me sleep. But I can not overcome a bump. Marvin does not escape or lead others to safety. The words suggest inaction as a kind of action. Do nothing and I must allow something. We hope, but we do not overcome. When we fail to act, we can not help. If only life were just about commentary. Action would be a luxury. We could dream and never sleep. Stay up all night, writing to ourselves, reading, thinking. And nothing would ever need to be done by noon.

Marvin’s poem reminds me of Auden’s thoughts about Germany’s invasion of Poland:

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
‘I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,’
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Auden has words of action (Those to whom evil is done, Do evil in return) and principles for guidance (There is no such thing as the State, And no one exists alone…We must love one another or die). Affirmation replaces doubt, conviction overcomes uncertainty, restlessness succumbs to responsiveness, and from action comes hope, which is the surest path to finding time to sleep again.