Poetry
Passing Cloud
Fad Galbeed
Synopsis
The poem opens with an apostrophe to the setting sun, which seems to flee faster than usual, while the clouds form a guard of honour for it. The poet attributes this haste to a young woman whose beauty eclipses the sun; the second part returns to the memory of an intimate and chance moment, when the wind uncovers her and she covers herself at once.
Context
Composed in 1978, in the jiifto metre and with an alliteration in g, the poem belongs to the lyrical side of the work, shortly before the poetic duels of 1979 and 1980 that set the author against Hadraawi under the military regime. The Somali text was printed in 2007; Martin Orwin studied it in 2020 as a model of modern Somali poetry, and notes in the work, since the seventies, the influence of al-Shabbi and Nizar Qabbani. The author recorded it himself, for the radio and television of Djibouti and then in Hargeisa.
Who it is for
For reading a short Somali lyric poem, available in English in the translation of the Poetry Translation Centre.
Prizes and reception
The African Studies Centre in Leiden counts its author among the most important Somali poets of the twentieth century.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.