Venice masks

Wednesday 2 August 2017

Justice Is Done - Amadou Oumar Bâ

Beaten up,
Robbed,
Hospitalized?
And the witnesses?
Many as the grains of the sand:
Kadiel is one;
Ndoulla
Ndyam Bele is one
Even the birds can testify…
But you forget that the chief
Has his son as the judge
And his son-in-law as interpreter.

Amadou Oumar Bâ (1921 - 1998) Mauritania
Translated by Oumar Moussa Ba (Arabic to French) and Pierre Joris (French to English)
Source: African Soulja

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for the find

    ReplyDelete
  2. Please who can help me with Oumar Moussa Ba's poems apart from "justice is done"?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi "unknown" - I assume you mean poems available online for free? I'm afraid I don't know. A couple of his poems are translated into English in the publication "Poems for the Millennium, Volume Four: The University of California Book of North African Literature" by Jerome Rothenberg, Pierre Joris, Jeffrey Cane Robinson and Habib Tengour

    ReplyDelete

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