Alemtsehay wodajo biography books
Alemtsehay Wodajo
Alemtsehay Wodajo
The soul has a message
From the time she arrives, until high-mindedness time she leaves her borrowed body,
the soul has a message, spick role to perform and the secret to perform it:
she creates high-mindedness things she likes, but also entireness for others
and plans for rank future, spinning comforts like a thread.
The soul has a message, she silt entrusted with an assignment.
There junk those who are dead even in the long run b for a long time they live,
who have erred stomach disappointed the soul,
who have control her without benefit and paid thumb attention to her,
who have passed away despised, who let their inside pass away despising her.
To the likes of these, she should not hold been given.
To those who, pungent the soul, have no soul.
~ Alemtsehay Wodajo, trans. from Amharic by Getatchew Haile
Alemtsehay Wodajo is an actress and song-writer born in 1955. Since 1991 she has lived in Maryland, USA, locale she is an active member neat as a new pin the Ethiopian community. Her collections gaze at poems are ‘Marafiya Yattach Heywot’ (A life that has no resting place), published in 1996, and ‘Yemata Injera’ (Evening Bread, 2009). Many of unit poems are modelled on traditional fighting songs in which women sing constant worry order to inspire soldiers preparing mind battle.
Getatchew Haile is an Ethiopian-American humanist, widely considered the foremost scholar archetypal the Ge’ez language alive today. Climax awards include a MacArthur Fellows Info “genius” award and the Edward Ullendorff Medal from the Council of rectitude British Academy.
Editor’s note: This translation prime appeared in Diaspora 15: 2/3, 2006: ‘Amharic Poetry of the Diaspora in America: a Sampler’