Four Poems by Ibrahim Hirsi
Patience
Anna haatan dulqaad iyo
Samir wayga idlaaday
And I can no longer
Forbear nor be patient
—Ismail Aw Aadan
We spent a lifetime waiting, drabbed in patience,
We kept our hopes locked up, flicked rosary beads of patience.
Silence is too close to reflection is too close to madness,
The world is but America’s condom and we are all slaves to patience.
Dhoodaan was a constant. Molten metal onto water,
Too harsh and too resolved . . . a true enemy of patience.
My wearied, charcoal earth, now sashed in white,
Our rage is leathered, Abdirahman, so let’s get high on patience.
False prayers shield no one, I’ve disinfected my heart,
Intention has long made palatable the bitter taste of patience.
They have sent another telegram as you sit with the previous question.
At least define for them struggle; is it war or is it patience?
That night, dreams overpowered, proved us simple and weak,
All that’s missing is a kaban, we raged with such bitter patience.
They tied 50 men together, made them anchors in the Red Sea,
What is power if not an idol, if not the antithesis of patience.
We count words before they escape, refuse to let them leave our lips mosaic,
Freud will not be proven right today, theory is just as painful as patience.
They died a couplet, their bones woven into each other,
Love is a twin of death, is a distant cousin of patience.
What of all the nations that have been scraped of hope?
To refuse to die, is that resilience or patience?
She etched her name into my flesh, verse backlit in blood
Long sleeve shirts for a few weeks, wounds heal under patience.
As they argue about its function, poems shakes whole continents,
Poetry is a xirsi and there is no song without patience.
Topsoil
A ship that moves through sand and rocky terrain
Each of its sides named
Not branded
You don’t pain what sustains you
To even ride it is taboo
Balanced across the earth, its movements cut like coral across borders and barriers
The nation state cannot imprison sustenance
At any point a can of deodorant in the sun will explode
Each year the grass grows grayer and shorter, more tough
Mars the earth like the shadow of a bruise
Sustains fewer and fewer
See the ground pucker and constrict around what little it can
Watch it spit itself out, command itself against the bothered
Take back what it wills
Some would rather cull others than curb their desires
Skin the Earth of its patina, leave it ashy and convulsing
They wish to murder their way out of their predicament
Electrical grids wrap the earth like ley lines
Nomads charge their phones on solar panels
And rivers dry up
Here, the acquainted suffer the worst price
Soapstone Pylons
Your residence
Traces of debate fragrance air
Leave diaphanous remnants on lip
You think of clams and mother of pearl
The role of the eldest son of the eldest son
Amulets and infertility
The way tea and all it carries
Consume your day
Never why though
Recollection is a most unforgiving lurch
Back out the leather skinned address book, tick off
The numbers. You can breathe—until next month
When you were younger you didn’t need a book
To count the names of those who relied on you
How much they relied on you
Did the list get longer?
Your memory weaker?
Another question that doesn't need to be answered
Whilst you're here you might as well call Mother
You listen closely to the dial of the phone
An exorcism of sorts
Tonight is reminiscence and the rot of sentimentality
Tonight is the red terrain of Galguduud, mars on earth
And the squelching mud of Birmingham
Brought together
Via satellites and pylons and £5 calling cards
Tonight is all the ways you are in bondage with home
The guilt of survival
The gratitude of endurance
The grief of circumstance
A nostalgia that brings no joy
Ghazal 005 [v.15]
Amase soo dabree waadigii,
damaca waallaaye
Or return to me a second time for you are,
crazy with greed
—Xaawa Jibriil
My lineage is matted with those who need repentance.
They've all returned home; I don't know enough to ask for their repentance.
Dreams. The truest reflection, a portion of future,
Whenever I dream in English I return to repentance.
There is art, devotion and then there is where they meet.
Ibn Taymiyyah, did you see that poem as repentance?
My great-grandfather was buried on the same shores he was born,
They told me you inherited his defect, a disguised repentance.
I used to pray from the last third of night till the birds chirped in prostration.
Aimed for my mother’s forehead spot. scars of repentance.
Nothing cuts the arteries like listening to Kediye’s inherited grief,
1980-2020, a lifetime filling burial pits with a circumvented repentance.
Aabo raised me in the presence of warm milk and the colours of aayahs, why?
Ahhhhh, I remember. Even his town was named ‘Worship God’, red sand and repentance.
It leaves imprints on your cheeks, being able to trace your birth to a drought,
A generation spat out by Gaatame, where pain is repentance.
Roonow. Raxmaanow. Raxiimow. He whose Hand my soul is,
Hirsi is but a servant, accept this purest of repentance!
Ibrahim Hirsi is a writer and independent researcher. He is co-founder of Koor Archives and editor of Journal Gobanimo.
