I'm also a person. I'm an Eritrean.
When I saw the world didn’t care
If I was stripped of everything,
Even my dignity,
And beaten like a slave
Less than human,
I lost all sense of peace except in saying
I am also a person. I’m an Eritrean.
the first stanza of Issayas Tsegai’s poem ‘I Am Also A Person’. It captures the feeling that even a 'hopeless horizon’ can contain a voice and, however horrifying the losses, it cannot be denied. here is the rest of the peom :
The wind wanted my bones…
I wished I was never born….
I left my home
Because it abandoned me.
I left my stream
Because I would have drowned.
I left.
I couldn’t bear the burden…
The crumbled barn
And livestock disappeared,
The yard smelling only of dust,
Nothing to make in to bread…
No harvest
Nothing but drought ahead…
the angel of death;
Nothing but one horror
Pouring over another.
Birds in the swaying trees…
The rhythm of the sea
And music in the stream -
They were our dominion and legacy;
We ate and dressed well,
Living and sleeping in peace
And devoted to good work.
I loved this country.
- Issayas Tsegai
first published in Issays Tsegai’s poetry collection Lemin-Leminey in 1998, and translated to English by Ghirmai Negash and Charles Cantalupo (Who needs a story, 2005).
