Reading about the Sabaean alphabet make me wndr wht lf wld b lk wtht vwls.
Category Archives: History
I DIDN’T SLEEP
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.
Poetry in Somalia
I found an interesting page with some insight into the historic and modern role of poetry in Somalia:
The Somalis have been described as a nation of bards and indeed oral poetry plays a central role in all aspects of Somali life such as watering camels and political debate. The wide range of activities in which poetry is involved is reflected in the diversity of genres of poetry differing in their subject matter and stylistic characteristics. In recent decades musical accompaniment has played an increasingly important role in certain types of poetry, and theatre has become an important art form incorporating poetry.
[…]
The poetry of Salaan Arrabay, on the other hand, became an anti-war weapon. His best-known work, “O Kinsman, Stop the War,” was an appeal to end a long-standing feud between two rival sections of the Isaaq clan in northern Somalia. “Tradition has it,” says Samatar, “that the poet on his horse stood between the massed opposing forces and, with a voice charged with drama and emotion, chanted the better part of the day until the men, smitten with the force of his delivery, dropped their arms and embraced one another.”
[…]
Somalis have long debated the merits of a nomadic, pastoral existence versus those of a settled agricultural community. In this excerpt from a Somali poem, a nomad explains his decision to return to his herds after a brief try at farming:
It is said that one cannot pierce the sky to get rain for one’s garden, Nor can one drive the farm, as one drives animals, to the place Where the rain is falling. Worst of all, one cannot abandon one’s farm, even though barren, Because all one’s efforts are invested in it. The farmer, in counter argument, replies: A man with no fixed place in this world cannot claim one in heaven.
It seems to me that areas where it is very risky or costly to create items of any permanence that poetry and verse are the perfect form for tradition as well as laws. The breakdown of portable forms of expression and systematic erosion of the songs and spoken art seems to signal the last flicker from a society under pressure of dissolution or destruction. What a tragedy if we fail in helping preserve the knowledge and wisdom contained in the poems of Somalia.
China backs down on aid-for-oil in Sudan?
The Economist reports that as the crisis in western Sudan continues to worsen, the UN finally might actually be asked to engage.
SINCE the tragedy in Darfur, Sudan’s western region, began three years ago, at least 200,000 people — some say more than 300,000 — have died; another 2m, in a population of 6m, have been displaced, many of them fleeing across the border into Chad; […] Now, belatedly, the UN is likely, as a last resort, to send blue helmets to Darfur. The United States, which two years ago accused the Sudanese government of genocide, is driving the plan, and opposition to it is fading. The Sudanese government in Khartoum, which has armed and encouraged the mounted Arab militias, or janjaweed, responsible for most of the killing, has stopped denouncing the UN intervention idea out of hand. The AU, whose peacekeepers have proved sadly unable to stop the janjaweed’s campaign of rape, murder and pillage, has acknowledged that it needs the UN’s help. And even China, which had opposed any UN intervention for fear of annoying Sudan’s murderous government, from which it buys vast dollops of oil, is now unlikely to object.
Most of the oil companies have withdrawn from the Sudan already, while China has taken the opportunity to expand control of the oil companies and establish itself as the Sudan’s largest trading partner. And yet, as the article points out, the UN presence might actually be a NATO mission in conjunction with the African Union.
It’s not clear if this supports the Whitehouse strategy or is happening in spite of it, since Bush quietly lobbied to neuter the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act in Congress (apparently as the Sudanese government was seen as an ally in the war on terror).
China had claimed to be innocently perfoming aid-for-oil through “non-interference in domestic affairs”, but in reality they armed the Islamic government in Khartoum, undoubtedly leading directly to the genocide in Darfur through air/ground superiority. On the other hand they also provided a fair number of soldiers to the UN for other conflict areas in Africa. In any case, it is clear that the US again may be perceived to be weakening in influence as China’s participation was needed in order for the UN to be an effective force in the region.
One could almost argue that China took a page out of the Cold War playbook and knowingly destabilized the region in order to facilitate investment and then only just approved the use of NATO forces to secure access to resources in northern Africa, under the guise of humanitarian assistance…