Mihret Kebede

Tales about Silence

Translated from Ethiopian Amharic into English by Nebiy Mekonnen and Eric
Ellingsen, from English into German by Rike Scheffler, and back into English by
Chris Beckett

This poem is an act which is the opposite but also the same as Mihret’s poem.
Stability and change are all mixed up in it.
This poem exists through what it says, it is the thing it asks when it asks: my
dear, my city, why are you so silent?
This poem speaks about Menelik the king, about gold and ideas, butter, pride
and milk.
This poem leaves the out-of-tune, the history of itself out, it does not allow silence
in, it takes silence up.
This poem calls to all citizens, female and male, she or he.
This poem is itself a city, a tale, which pleads for words, for the lost, to build
on truth: with roads, houses, chickens, freezers, hands and the soft moon, with
evening light and teeth, tongues, fences, and injera. This city broods,
watches out. It asks the voices: why are you so quiet?
This poem is full of love.
It rests on sounds, gutturals, a warm vocal, and many many I’s.
This poem is Addis Ababa, is Ankara, Athens and Jakarta, but also Vienna.
It is not ashamed. It carries the gold of what it says.
This poem acts like butter, cream, milk, with filtering and shaking, freely shaking
up and out and round, shaking awake and after and before, it is full of full shakings—
this poem asks about kings like big ideas. It makes a king out of voices. It
makes powerful, makes power.
It acts out of the act of silence.
This poem is not quiet.