Magazine

from the May 2021 issue

Say to the Tomb

Poet Bios Diallo connects Mauritania’s struggle to form a united national identity with similar conflicts elsewhere on the continent.

And
Say to the tomb, without pride
Here the poem ends
Here identities, prayers bleed
And, look
Here also the nation is reborn

And since a country has but one language
That of its future, of its people
I will brandish my own
Though full of holes

And since we won’t exile ourselves
Or harm our land
I will be, for my nation
The eternal shepherd.

Bios Diallo was born in Sélibaby, in the south of Mauritania. A journalist by profession, he has been running the Rencontres littéraires Traversées Mauritanides in Nouakchott, which each year welcomes writers from all over the world, since 2010. He is the author of three collections of poems, La Saigne (2021), Les Os de la Terre (2009), and Les Pleurs de l’Arc-en-ciel (2002); a novel, Une Vie de Sébile (2010); and a work of nonfiction, De la naissance au mariage chez les Peuls de Mauritanie (2014). He has also contributed to a number of collections.

» More about Bios Diallo

Translated from French by Emma Ramadan

Emma Ramadan is a literary translator based in Providence, RI, where she also co-owns Riffraff bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, and an NEA Translation Fellowship. Her translations include Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, Virginie Despentes’s Pretty Things, Kamel Daoud's Zabor, or the Psalms, and Abdellah Taïa's A Country for Dying.

» More about Emma Ramadan

Magazine

from the May 2021 issue

Say to the Tomb

Read more from the May 2021 issue

Further Reading

Barzakh: The Land of In-between

A Tactical Alliance

Movement and Stasis: Contemporary Mauritanian Literature

Like what you read? Help WWB bring you the best new writing from around the world.