Izina - Ketty Nivyabandi

History will remember this man
Our grandchildren will study him between school recesses
Old women will speak of him as a strange enigma
A myth, an eccentric aberration . . .
The old men will brush off their shoulders
Their lesson finished, the children will rush to the courtyard to play ubete, the wolf
And mothers let out a weak sigh
At hearing their children cry:
Peter ninde? Ni wewe, ni wewe
Who’s Pierre? It’s you, it’s you.
There will be no more wolf on the vast schoolyards,
There will only be the memory of a man
Strange, lonely face overrun by wrinkles
They will speak of washing young men clean,
Of arithmetic calculations, Pythagoras’ theory
Of incredible equations of terms
Of absurd stories that will make teenagers snicker
And make sweethearts shudder
They will recount that he arose before dishonor
And many other unkind legends
An accident along the very bumpy history
of a country so green . . .
It will be said that he was a valiant fighter
That he defeated the most terrible wars
But that he forgot to win one, sovereign:
Eternal:

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Ketty Nivyabandi (born 1978) Burundi
Translated by [David] Shook
Source: Words Without Borders