Poems

Madax Goodir

Once when I was a child
one afternoon, from my father,
under a tree where he used to sit,
I gathered a [kooban forming a full circle] rounded? story.
He said: "[Many] rainy seasons ago,
there was a king with horns,
who decided that never should
the defect be known of him.
A coward has his ways.
He checked them [the horns] all the time
hid them and wrapped them in a turban.
A man who was a servant found out the secret,
but he built up resentment.
The knowledge [of the defect] was the reason for that
and/but he was said to be a person who was mistaken
and, if he did not refrain,
he heard that there would be throat cutting. [i.e. that he would be killed]
And so now the gear [as in a car] was moved up for/against him;
the path of danger which he had found [i.e. the dangerous situation he found himself in]
that it [the news he had] pass across was refused to him. [i.e. he was refused the opportunity of telling the news, refused the opportunity of passing beyond that situation]
And he is his verdict. [He understood the predicament he was in]
Food could not be swallowed;
the news which was knotted kept him awake.
He wandered from place to place;
and from all the people who were broken up in the belly [i.e. who were hungry [for the news]]
he decided to keep it [the news] hidden.
And with that his sleeping mat caught fire. [figurative: he was so wound up it was as if his bed was on fire and so he couldn't sleep]
In the empty space of the night,
when deep sleep was lacking,
in the middle of the night, from his home
and his house, he leapt.
He headed for the darkness of the bush
and the pools with the wild animals.
In the darkness, the eagle
and the Waller's gazelle fled away.
Constant memory and remembrance and
affection for the poor
put a shield down for him. [they were his only defence/ the only thing that kept him going(?)]
He wandered about directionless.
When the dawn shimmered,
he dug under a tree
like a wild animal which dug a deep hole.
Then he put his face
and his beard on the ground
and whispered with [as in talked with] the hole on its own
and passed on the content [of his news]
'that the king Goojaa
Has the head of a kudu'.
Now don't interrupt me. [this is the father speaking to the child remember]
What you are collecting from me
is a story which entered me once.
The account of the horns.
The one stuffed with it [i.e. the servant who knew the truth of the horns and was stuffed full of it, as if he had eaten a huge amount] when he shot it/threw it, [i.e. when he had spoken it and got rid of it]
when it flew from his shoulders,
everything became light.
And at that place of burial
he dusted off his go', [part of his clothing]
set off and moved on.
And later on, in that place,
it was said ‘When it rained
horns emerged/grew'"