NATIONAL DRESS

One day a young man got a chance,

He couldn't believe his luck.

He almost fainted out of merriment,

When he heard he was going abroad.

Didn't carry much,

Couldn’t have either, even if he wanted;

Only a bag full of spices and a national garment

Proud to show off his country's achievement.

But didn't have one before, nor did he want.

So he quickly raised the cash,

And got one tailor made.

But before his departure,

He didn’t wait to put it on

And started behaving in a manner he never did before.

From a humble origin because he was.

Now things have changed;

He wanted to be the embodiment of a nation,

And the culture of the kings and warriors' manifestation.

He couldn't wait for the occasion,

He started dreaming

Just like a grown up,

Who has mellowed down,

And matured through time.

Without the wrath of time battering the skin

And the forehead furrowed and terraced.

As it happened to those who run the gauntlet,

Manned by joint forces of fierce parasites

And merciless torrid rays from the sun light.

Abroad, dressed he had never done before,

He went to a community of his kind.

But there he did not make any scene

Nor did it create the sensation as he had planned it would.

He was one among many similarly dressed.

And soon realised that was not the occasion he was looking for.

And his face went ruddily embarrassed,

Adding to his duress as he was unused to a national dress.

He went to his lodging after defraying the expenses

Which he thought was beyond his means.

But for the national dress

Neatly folded he put it backs in a box.

He waited for another occasion,

The trouble: there came no occasion

He could think of fitting the national dress,

Then time ticked by and passed

With the national dressed still wrapped in a box.

Then one day he decided, for the heck of it, to put it on,

And took a train -

A traditional fly-swatter in one,

A cane in the other,

Arms wide open -

He then sat next to a person.

Inviting everyone for to a spectacular garment design show.

All these without giving the impression,

That he has become the centre of attention.

He kept gazing at the flank of the train

Where direction map was displayed,

Though he had no clear destination in mind.

After some minutes of self deceptive disguise,

To the relief of his strained neck

He brought his eyes down,

Rotate them left and right,

Hoping to catch a few captives admirers on the opposite side,

But a moment unfortunately denied.

All his eagerness to show off,

His nation’s achievements of past,

In defence of the uneventful present,

And the threat of fast obliteration the future scents,

Did not work out as planned.

The hope that he would make the connection,

To introduce his name and that of his nation,

The grandmother of all civilisation.

At present though penurious and disposed

Staggering with the help of a live support machine.

Nevertheless, Being a mathematician that he was,

He worked out an equation:

There will not be present without past,

And future is largely the two elements’ product.

So he felt he was after all their equal,

If not so, at least an important integral part.

He preferred to look back, way back

The civilisation of the Greeks,

The time when the solar system

And star at the centre were black.

So he smiled and began to feel at ease,

For he had concluded he was among equals.

He was indeed a trained mathematician,

Good at working out equations.

But the people seated on the opposite, did not yield,

They seemed to take no notice,

Of his current existence,

Let alone his past.

Books, fanzine and newspaper in hands,

They all appeared to have something to read,

To detract their eyes and minds from unwanted drift.

Some looking tired before the full day waiting ahead,

Their eyes were completely shut,

While others looked through the unwanted guest,

As if he was a transparent glass.

Other eyes that look at him;

They were economical with their visions:

The curtains were nearly brought down.

However, the irony despite the pretences,

Closed or no closed eyes,

They all seemed to be busy,

Scrutinising the unwanted guest’s details:

The ritual costume analysed,

Its elements itemised.

But still wearing blank faces,

That accepted no admission,

Nor gave recognition

Or offered compliments.

To a man their attention who desperately wanted.

Shortly, after mission accomplished,

The eyes seem to inform the mind,

It was not worth wasting time,

The person in the ritual costumes was a phantom,

An aberration of the past

Who did not exist,

In actual fact.

Then the mind instruct the fingers,

To flick the papers.

And the eyes to do what they were good at -

Devour a novel rich in graphics,

Encapsulating the tragedy of a tribe,

In a far away land where the star was black.

The tragedy that was read

Told more about the person,

In a national garment

Than his own cat-walk display,

In a fast moving train.

Having seen the materials they read,

And a starving figure,

Similar to his own texture

Portrayed on the outer covers,

The young man began to think all was not well

And stressed, his chest began to swell.

A glance that came his way,

Began felt like a dart propelled

Aimed at the swelling chest of his to impale.

Every laughter thereafter,

Every simper, A twitch in the mouth’s corner,

The spectators made

Began haunting him like a spectre.

Then he began to soliloquise

As if in séance,

Asking his distant audiences,

As a student of maths,

How could he possibly make -

The two sides of the equation,

With a third variable on the side match?

How could they be equal?

A trinket but a clever talking and fast moving metals

With earth bound mule as a rival?

As he sat, as he talked and at the people as he looked,

Down the back of his neck

He felt an opportunist ague performing an attack.

Then he became somnolent,

Only to be fed with dreams,

Away from the fast running engine –

Powered by steam.

Then he found himself in no mans land

In a jungle with tall pampas grasses,

For survival, left to his own means.

But it was a cruel dream,

Relentlessly pursued by a wild cat,

The fiercest of them all,

Depriving him a fleeting moment of rest,

A respite to gather ones thought,

As to when and how that wild beast to counter fight.

In the ensuing chase,

One to garner a meal and devour,

The other to rescue its own life.

Every time the gap between the prey

And the menacing predator - Tiger,

Became ever narrower.

He then came to a sheer precipice,

At the bottom of which running water can be seen

However, there appears to be thirty minutes bodily flight

In between.

There, there were sharp rocks,

Strewed and studded,

As tall as missiles,

Looking like a monster's teeth yawing to the skylight.

The African was superstitious.

He uncoiled an old leather rope

He had carried with him,

As to when it was made,

He couldn't even remember.

But what he knew for sure

This leather belt was made by his grandfather.

This man loved his grandfather

So much so, he had visited the him

Over and over,

In his dream trip on the train to nowhere.

As he used to visit him in the past

When he came across

Situations impasse.

While all those thoughts were in his dreaming mind

The real menacing tiger was closing behind.

Then down the precipice

To descend, he decided.

But it was an act of desperation

For the rope was old,

And under the corpulent weight of the young bloke,

It could easily break.

Even worse:

The rope was too short

To help him land on the shore.

That was one thing;

And the other:

To pursue his prey

The tiger followed the same way.

Looking up, he saw the cat was clever –

He was on the rope and moving faster.

Then his lost his nerve,

His heart drummed, as it had never.

Add to the weight of the predator and prey

The beating of the heart lent the rocks hands to beat,

And the rope began to dangeriously sway.

He felt this was not his day.

A moment of truth had entered his mind

However, when he looked around

There was nobody, good bye he could say.

Then came a clever idea.

That if that was it,

The dastard tiger must also die.

And to that effect he decided to hang on

Prematurely he would not let go the rope.

And discourage the tiger half way to stop -

Realising his prey had already gone.

So he decided he would wait until the cat neared to his end,

Then bravely he would get hold of the tail

And take the devil with him down to hell.

And the plan worked so well.

While still in his dream

He saw his mangled body and that of the animal

lying under at the bottom of the stream,

The rest strewed and scattered,

On the rocks near the river.

Then suddenly a loud cry came, everybody heard

Men, women, old, young, they all got startled

Emergency train stops, some tried.

Tortured by hallucination and day dream

Driven by expection where it could not be found

Realising how fool of himself he has made

His shoulder blades slouched and appearing lame

The shawl he had carefully dressed now misplaced

His pride tarnished and his person disgraced.

Out he went off the train,

Vowing never will he do the silly thing again.

He folded the national dress,

And put it back in his luggage,

For another occasion, another place, another age

If there was left in himself some courage.

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From Shefenfen

By Haile Selassie Girmay

London June, 1993.