Amha Asfaw
Silence
Silence is golden, say my countrymen.
A bug would not enter a closed mouth, say my countrymen.
They have not seen America,
a land where silence is synonymous with laziness
and a quiet man is considered ignorant.
A candle in a jar
Do not deceive yourself
that you are a candle in a jar:
a candle gives off light.
Do not deceive yourself
that you are a glowing ember:
embers burst into flame.
Do not deceive yourself
saying “we are the ashes left by a fire”:
you never burnt like a fire.
You do not have the fuel.
You do not have the oil
which is the source of all light.
You do not have it in you.
~ Amha Asfaw, trans. from Amharic by Getatchew Haile
Amha Asfaw was born in 1949 and has lived in USA since 1974. He is a physicist working as research instructor and programmer at University of Missouri, Columbia. He has translated poems of Langston Hughes into Amharic. His latest collection is ‘Yilalla Denebo’, the title of a funeral lament.
Getatchew Haile is an Ethiopian-American philologist, widely considered the foremost scholar of the Ge’ez language alive today. His awards include a MacArthur Fellows Program “genius” award and the Edward Ullendorff Medal from the Council of the British Academy.
Editor’s note: This translation first appeared in Diaspora 15: 2/3, 2006: ‘Amharic Poetry of the Diaspora in America: a Sampler’