Tuesday, May 31, 2011

D E C O R O U S D E C O R U M

PROLOGUE

Of some exertions of duty of a citizen or of social responsibility of a poet, I write this. I write of the reluctance of the generation we live in, I murmur at the possessors of power time Present, I lament the love and morality of time Past, I envision the extravagant hopes of time Future.

And thus We decenter, We deconstruct in Decorous Decorum Their mindless neocolonial discourse.
Narrative one: when law fails and constitution fades, the affairs of the nation(s) are distracted and moral wrongness becomes a full-blown ideal. Narrative two: by the contractualist account of theconstitution, for instance, one such wrong ideal is the principle that no one could reasonably rejectrather than everyone could reasonably accept. This principle would be said to be right, first, in the sense that all principles would be agreed to. Second, it would be right if the beneficiaries were provided with all equal rights and with all relevant true general beliefs to accept and / or to reject, temporarily.

Under such wrong ideals, people suffer severe hardships. However, they believe those hardships are avoidable by some alternative principles-principles under which no one is obliged to bear comparable burdens. Narrative three: the issue of legitimacy! When there is no rule of law, who is legitimate, who is not?

Many of us now stand at a point of crossroad: to this historical juncture, we have come with more than one cause, more than one moral tradition. We participate in relatively different moral communities, and thus we chant more than onenarratives – the narratives of unjust historical relationships and lawlessness. Forced to dance all at once to one drum beat of our dictators, but our song is reduced to mere hullabaloo.

Our rulers our dictators are our democrats. They rule us and rule over us by the very knowledge of our temper. Not by a judicious management of it but by a witty and manipulative skill of contravention. They work on our temper. In so doing, they dissolve our unity. Our rulers do not rule us with concern, that is, as human beings who are capable of suffering and frustration. Our rulers do not rule us with respect, that is, as human beings who are capable of forming and acting on intelligent conceptions of how our lives should be lived, They rather tame us unlike humane.

A conception of identity over time incorporates criteria of memory retention and bodily continuity. As an active being, an identity is not simply a given, but is created and recreated continuously through identifying with one’s projects. Identity is therefore a reflection of a given purposive dimension. In a continued scuffle between the statesmen and the public, in a series of contemptible victories of the government and scandalous submissions of few, that identity of the nationalist is smashed and ultimately misunderstood as a traitor, or a terrorist, at most.

Discontents now certainly here are: deliberate neglect of the causes of nationalist movements, a growing disregard of the violations of human rights. Experiences may justify that when popular discontents are prevalent, there is generally something amiss in the constitution or in the conduct of the government. If the wealth of the nation is the cause of its turbulence, I assume it nonsensical to introduce poverty. If the thirst for freedom is the root cause of disorder, I imagine it idiocy to propose servitude. Of the distributive justice, i.e. , to redistribute resources between more- and less- fortunate citizens, the nation(s) should be willing. In my tradition, Man should be willing, not forced. Unlawful and forceful measures inflame rather than allay the heats. If we are enemies let us confront, if we are rivals let us compete, if we are friends let us sit and compromise. Constitution alone does not make us One, policy alone does not unite us, nor does a divided defense force by itself. But One Love, My People.

Artists are responsible to nudge those who may act ill by design; art is commendable to put justice at least upon a par in favor of the people.
Or it is, If Youth knew, If Age could only! And so on…

A.T. D
Finfinne
2006           
___________________


(My People)


for him I sing
I raise the present on the past
(as some perennial tree out of its roots,)
the present on the past
with time and space I him dilate and fuse
the immortal laws
to make himself by them the law unto himself.

_____________________Walt Whitman in his Leaves of Grass


__(Prologue)

yaa Saba ko
yaa Saba Waaqayyoo,
(oh, my people,
oh, people of God!)

I sing in praise of you
of your political quietisim
of your dignified patience
of your decorous decorum
of the location of your politesse.

praise is not a praise
when sung by a thwarted fiddler,
a fiddler let down by friends and foes
alike. being insulted, humiliated, wretched
dehumanized, dispossessed, displaced
and depopulated, dingiered
my people’s eulogy is no more than a dirge
no more than faarsaa, an elegy for the dead.

there can be no praise song
like the geerarsa song of bygone times!
for nothing can be like the past—
should we extol, eulogize the past
with all its Imperfections!

your patience is so deep
as deep as Malkaa Irreessaa1
as wide as Hora Arsadii2 and waaqa3
my people,
how unfathomable
is the depth
of your sorrow
your grief
your tear and blood being shed
during these long nights?
and who can tell it
if not you, my people?

who can tell the depth of an ocean
if not the dolphin hunted in it,
if not the fish hooked in it
my people?

your hope is mistaken for fear
your patience for naive-ity
your repressed greed (for freedom)
is taken for narrow-ism
separatism, terrorism!
your vented national (liberation) movement 
is belittled to hooliganism
my people,
and your benign presence
is mistaken for your docile absence.
your terrible ordeal today
is taken for an effervescent orgy.

when the road already taken is wrong
the road not taken can be right
my people
now that you are
at the cul-de-sac, at an impasse
there is a cliff before you
roll the stones before you
and the rocks in your way
let them go down to their basics
than you live rolling them up
and down like Sisyphus.

or imagine how long it takes you
to the go-backs, to the no direct path—
to the starting point?
the journey cannot be   
the destination by itself,
my people,
or you don’t know the difference?
yes, difference?

have dreams
and let your dreams come true.
if you have dreams, my people,
why are your dreams so  blurred?
you don’t sleep well,
or you don’t dream well
or you don’t know the difference,
yes difference?


__(Of the Unended Quest)

my people,
think of your case in time
for you are only a heartbeat
away from your end.
and I beg you not to put off
this unended quest to another moment.
a great number of us
spend our days
without any thought
it seems.

you live as though you live
forever, my  people. 
this big world stretched before you
does have no duty to help
but, only obligation
not to cause harm to you,
to maintain global justice
and sustain demands of compatriots.

my people,
I feel like a raajii, a prophet
and live like a waloo, a poet.
a poet is always packing
his belongings! he is an emaltu4
a traveller always seeking an unended quest.
who said,
a person is what s/he does
and a person does what s/he is?         
every minute is like the last minute
and every day is like the last day—
for a poet in the least,
for a freedom fighter in the most!

and sure,
when the day comes
you will rally hand in hand
in the Freedom Square
and say hoo-qubaa!5
and sing, God bless this Land!
with the martyrs
with children of the deceased
with the bereaved mothers and wives
with those lame ducks: the gameeyi
and the gadaamoojii6    
with the destitute.
yes, that is regardless of
how you have lived today, my people!

others, both friends and foes,
do not hesitate to act insanely
to act on your behalf
or to stand in your way.
do not all these signal your ultimate end?
and yet, you do not deter them in the least
my people.

I say this of your widespread indifference,
of the negligence, indecision, reluctance
on the part of the multitudes.

__(The Dilemma of Pleasure and/in Pain)

you cannot eat and save
the same bread
at the same time,
my people.
you  need freedom, as well,
you need your children
to inherit the grand gada legacy7:
liberty, peace, abundance,
all that is kaawoo8 and finna9
and as yet, your daily prayer that
kill me not Waaqa,10
before I see bilisumma,11
is your another irresistible selfishness.
another lightness of our being!  

oh, my people,
oh, people of God!
are you not tired of seeing a double vision
and hearing a double echo?
or are you not bored of
tuning and dancing to
same drumbeat of dictators?
tune to the beat of your dibbee12 now
and dance if I sing
cry if I cry? or I would ask,
like the Lebanese poet,13
ask my countrymen,
yaa Saba Waaqayyoo, that
I have sung for you, but you did not
dance; I have wept before you, but
you did not cry. shall I sing and
weep at the same time?

__(Of Art/Artist as Liberator)

my people,
art does liberate,
as truth shall triumph!
a poet looks at the coming generation;
a stateswo/man looks at the coming election.
of their constituents:
the poet’s constituents are
generations to come
and those who have
memory of the past
hope for the future
but luck confidence in the present—
critical that they are!

of the stateswo/man,
the constituent is
the generation stuck in the present
looming in the here-and-now
the generation sandwiched
betwixt past and future
the generation shortsighted
by glittery empty words of hypocrites
the generation basking the sun
on the peak of an ivory tower
the generation sleeping fast
under siidaa14 roofed with fleeting dreams.

in the present,
oh, people of God,
those who presage, augur
are said, Those are borne before their time!
to be borne before one’s time is to precede time;
not to stillbirth! it is to dawn on the sleeping earth
and soon to set, as many did!

but, true, in the present generation are
those borne before their time:
scholars, poets, bards!
politicians are deficient,
and military geniuses or social architects
to clear the way
to lay the ground
to build a free nation.

when we are all thinkers,
we are not thinkers to the end:
men and women,
they foretell what is to come
they foresee what is to happen
they are emaltuu for generations to come
they are sage for the generation present
they are salt for this Land,
oh, people of God.

__(For if one starts from where one is, etc.)

where is the meeting point
of past, present and future,
my people?
if the center of the earth is here, where you stand,
so the meeting point of time
is now, in your hand. take your fate in your hand
and change your fate,
my people, or nothing changes!

others raise the present on the past
I raise the past on the present!
I am the tornado, the whirlwind
trapping like Caattoo,
the wild spirit of wild beasts
herding the living and the dead in one.
I tell in the vernacular
the telltales of poor hunters and herders—
of their misfortunes,
oh, my people! oh, people of God.

haunted by the nostalgic past
for him I sing who built this nation divided
but stand united in the face of adversities!

__(The Call)

my people,
I called you at midnight
to scare away the horde of beast in the farm
but you did not respond. you were making love
with your concubines in the farmhouse?
(or you were hanging out like spirit husbands?)
late when you woke up
all the three present at night
were no more: the farm, the beast, the woman.

I called you toward the crack of dawn,
my people,
to forage the oxen and plow,
the virgin land, but
you did not respond. you were settling disputes
or appeasing gods—gods in a rage
lifting their massive arms against you.
but, why, my people, you are not there indeed
in the time of need?

when I called you at noon
you did not respond. you were effervescing—
on a fabulous feast!
now that the gods are quieted
humankinds are reconciled
and all is too well, all is too corrupt—
your men, your women, your god?
you drink, you sing, you dance and make love
to lull the insatiable gods and goddesses
you don’t respond to calls!

and I called you in the evening,
when the  moon was hurrying westward
carrying honeycombs
of wisdom from the east
tucked in her thighs.
and I said: lets climb to the top
of those mountains
of Bale and Salale and Ilu
and give heera15 and seera16 to the world
and defy and sanctify
this Land.
and you answered: on the top of these mountains
in the valleys and plains beyond
our forefathers and mothers lived and sacrificed
worshiped and died. how can we claim
the mountains we abandoned
the valleys and plains we failed to honor
for long? 

and, I salute you, my people,
oh, people of God,

better later than never, my people!
come out of your comfort zone
make a bow and arrow out of my bone
make string and sling out of my skin
make a storm out of my anger
and tempest out of my tear and sorrow
make mud out of my flesh and blood
make a world out of my marrow
make glue out of my sweat
and protect this Land, bond this nation
before you die. if we are not dying,
my people, then why not we live?

but why ‘virtuous [men/women] pass mildly away’
when there are traitors, imposters, hypocrites,
you have some validation, my people?
oh, people of God! be honest to yourself
before you are honest to humankind!

__(Nostalgia)

in the homestead
where I crawled, toddled and
run after wild cats
where I put yoke on peers
ploughed as my father did
where my cock crowed
my hen cackled clutched hutched
where I chased mouse
cut a lizard her tail and laughed at her still pain

in the fields, in the hills across the rivers
where I lived, prayed as a herd boy 
now stand barracks and prison houses.
in the farms of wheat, barley, millet and maize
where I crept to weed, to hoe, to harvest are
stretched strongholds of standby alien forces.

in the fields of eela17 water heads/wells
where I watered my cattle
now play wolves, baboons, hyenas, foxes, monkeys:
all doing monkey businesses, and others. but
my calves are skinny
my heifers are so weak
my bullocks are impotent
my cows are barren,
oh, people of God!   

my people,
a lacuna in your finna
is a signal to a no strong breed in the Land.
there is no one panacea, no magic potion
to cure your myopia, my people.
but to raise the veil from your eyes
and find the lost footpath towards the future
to go back the track to the source
and to come forth with synergy
to go forward, on the right track hand in hand
faithfully and diligently

why, my people, why sit
your head in your breast
your mind locked
your spirit lowered
your heart split
your skin withered
your face haggard
your body languished
flogged, tormented
and your soul torn, stuck in the present?
why, my people,
why sit sandwiched
betwixt life and death?

you are now old and grey
bent on your walking stick,
my people, so old a nation
to defend itself, to build a free state?
so a mad dog can chase you?
a falling leaf can scare you?
a roaring mortar can faint you,
oh, my people?

you are defeated without war,
you are famished without famine
you are wretched without transgression
you are torn without conflict
you are slave without master,
oh, people of God.

__(If Chance is, it is where Preparation and Opportunity meet)

my dear country men and women
if Youth knew, if Age could,
elders could tell the past
they could not act
the Youth could tell the present
they could not act;
who can tell the future,
and who can act.

my people,
are you stagnant marshes
polluted with leeches, vampires, mosquitoes
or running waters of Gibe, Dabbus, Hawas18
feeding the Great Waters  of the world,
and then ebbing back into the source?
are you crooked vines, thorny bushes
hosting parasites
or sacred trees sanctified in your own being?

the location of chance is, my people,
where preparation and opportunity meet!
chance is not tossing time and waiting
if the head or the tail turns.

I hate you, my people, I hate you
because you hang yourself
on the  hook of chance,
and love a life of passivity, poverty
and servitude.

I love you, my people
you are peace loving and law abiding.
you are decorous. you are yes-men,
my people.

the answer is YES, but
what is the question,
my people?
you pose a puzzle
you do not know the solution yourself?
or you do not know the difference,
yes difference?

I hate, my people, I hate
your negligence, your reluctance,
your endless indecision,
not your dignified patience.
I hate your political quietude
your polite civil servitude
and unchanging indecision!

you are hot and cold, my people
you are hot only casually
and cold unmethodically
you are sightless. events  are your guide.
you are heartless. ill-bred rogues are your heads.
one can take a horse to the river, my people,
but one cannot force the horse to drink the water.

you raise your arm,
yaa Saba Waaqayyoo,
to hit the nail when it is still hot
but it is not there—
like a fleeting hope
like a slithering python
are you gods double-faced Janus-like19?
yesterday, you sadly fell,
my people,
and today, you morn much
more of the dirt than of the bruise?

today, your home is on a roaring fire,
my people,
and you chase rats and cockroaches
running away to escape fire
when your home is flaming?
what a daft, fatuous moral priority
urge you thus?

you are no more!
when your felt presence
becomes absent,
my people,
your felt absence,
becomes present.
here is a challenge
time has offered you in history
to tackle it temporal20make it or break it,
oh, people of God!

__(“I,” praise “Me”)

to end,
I sing thus in praise of my poor Self,
lest I should sing but once in a while
lest this be one last word,
oh, my people,
for my time is swift like all that is good and sublime!

I have a House
I have no Home
I have a Land
I have no Country
I have a People
I have no Nation
nor Nationality
or Citizenship,
oh, people of God,
We are Subject
on our Fatherland
We are distracted!

oh, my people,
oh, people of God,
where is my Home
what is my Country
who is ME21
why am I what I am
or, what is the difference?


NOTES
__________

1. River of Life, of Sacrifice
2. Hora Lake near Bushoftu, 45 km east of Finfinne. Site for the Irreecha Ceremony.
3. sky
4. messenger
5. thank You, Oh God. “Hoo-qubaa” is a thanksgiving prayer, esp. among the Macca Oromo
6. veterans
7. traditional (?) Oromo democracy
8. achievement and achievement behavior
9. peace, love, and life. All that is good for man and cattle
10. God
11. Freedom
12. drum
13. Kahlil Gibran Kahlil
14. altar, monument
15. constitution
16. Law
17. well water
18. rivers in Oromia. Hawas is in the east, Gibe is between Shawa and Wallaga (both Macca Oromo branch), Dabbus  is in the west
19. Janus is a double-face god, a guardian on the gate, a door-keeper on the Heaven’s gate facing in and out, West and East (European, Roman (?) tradition).
20. draws on Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks:
The architecture of this work (the book) is rooted in the temporal. Every human problem must be considered from the standpoint of time. So much is Decorous Decorum, My People, I think.

21. this is not by simple transformation of the heroic autonomous “I” to the accusative, receptive “ME”. 
It is a separation of the accusative, receptive self from the heroic self “so that the latter overflows the terms of its own identifications.”
_____Wendy C Hamblet, in her “The Geography of Goodness” (in The Monist, 2003:360), quotes Emmanuel Levinas as saying:

In thinking, a being which situates itself in the totality is not absorbed into it. It exists in relationship with a totality, but remains here, separated from the totality –ME.

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