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Warsan Shire

The House

  • 1 Our Blue Bodies | Translations: de
  • 2 Souvenir | Translations: de
  • 3 The Ugly Daughter | Translations: de
  • 4 Midnight in the Foreign Food Aisle | Translations: de
  • 5 Nail Technician as Palm Reader | Translations: de
  • 6 Her Blue Body Full of Light | Translations: de
  • 7 The House | Translations: de
  • 8 Conversations About Home (at the Deportation Centre) | Translations: desv
  • 9 Backwards | Translations: de
Language: english
Translations: german (Das Haus)
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The House

i
Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women.
Kitchen of lust, bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy.
Sometimes, the men— they come with keys,
and sometimes, the men— they come with hammers.

ii
Nin soo joog laga waayo, soo jiifso aa laga helaa,
I said Stop, I said No and he did not listen.

iii
Perhaps she has a plan, perhaps she takes him back to hers
only for him to wake up hours later in a bathtub full of ice,
with a dry mouth, looking down at his new, neat procedure.

iv
I point to my body and say Oh this old thing? No, I just slipped it on.

v
Are you going to eat that? I say to my mother, pointing to my father who is lying on the dining room table, his mouth stuffed with a red apple.

vi
The bigger my body is, the more locked rooms there are, the more men come with keys. Anwar didn’t push it all the way in, I still think about what he could have opened up inside of me. Basil came and hesitated at the door for three years. Johnny with the blue eyes came with a bag of tools he had used on other women: one hairpin, a bottle of bleach, a switchblade and a jar of Vaseline. Yusuf called out God’s name through the keyhole and no one answered. Some begged, some climbed the side of my body looking for a window, some said they were on their way and did not come.

vii
Show us on the doll where you were touched, they said.
I said I don’t look like a doll, I look like a house.
They said Show us on the house.
Like this: two fingers in the jam jar
Like this: an elbow in the bathwater
Like this: a hand in the drawer.

viii
I should tell you about my first love who found a trapdoor under my left breast nine years ago, fell in and hasn’t been seen since. Every now and then I feel something crawling up my thigh. He should make himself known. I’d probably let him out. I hope he hasn’t bumped in to the others, the missing boys from small towns, with pleasant mothers, who did bad things and got lost in the maze of my hair. I treat them well enough, a slice of bread, if they’re lucky a piece of fruit. Except for Johnny with the blue eyes, who picked my locks and crawled in. Silly boy chained to the basement of my fears, I play music to drown him out.

ix
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
No one.

x
At parties I point to my body and say This is where love comes to die. Welcome, come in, make yourself at home. Everyone laughs, they think I’m joking.


© Warsan Shire
Audio production: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, 2015
Categories: gender & sexuality, woman, body, love

Translations:

Language: german

Das Haus

i
Mutter sagt, in allen Frauen gibt es verschlossene Zimmer.
Triebeküche, Apathieboudoir, Kummerschlafgemach.
Manche Männer kommen mit ihren Schlüsseln
und manche Männer kommen mit ihren Hämmern.

ii
Nin soo joog laga waayo, soo jiifso aa laga helaa,

ich sagte Stopp, ich sagte Nein, er hörte nicht auf mich.

iii
Vielleicht hat sie einen Plan, vielleicht nimmt sie ihn mit zu sich,
nur damit er Stunden später in einer Wanne voller Eis erwacht,
mit trockenem Mund auf seine neue, saubere Prozedur starrt.

iv
Ich zeig auf meinen Körper und sag Oh, das alte Ding? Nein, bin gerade reingeschlüpft.

v
Willst du das denn essen?
Das frag ich Mutter, zeig auf Vater, der auf dem Esszimmertisch liegt, in seinem Mund ein roter Apfel.

vi
Je größer mein Körper ist, desto mehr verschlossene Zimmer hat er, desto mehr Männer kommen mit ihren Schlüsseln. Anwar steckte ihn nicht ganz hinein, ich überlege immer noch, was er in mir geöffnet haben könnte. Basil kam und zögerte drei Jahre an der Tür. Johnny mit den blauen Augen kam mit einem Beutel voller Werkzeug, das er bei anderen Frauen benutzt hatte: eine Haarnadel, eine Flasche Bleiche, ein Klappmesser und ein Glas Vaseline. Yussuf rief den Namen Gottes durch das Schlüsselloch, niemand antwortete. Manche bettelten, manche kletterten an meiner Seite, suchten ein Fenster, manche sagten, sie wären unterwegs und kamen nicht.

vii
Zeig uns an der Puppe
, sagten sie, wo man dich berührt hat.
Ich sagte Ich seh nicht aus wie eine Puppe, ich seh aus wie ein Haus.
Sie sagten Zeig es uns an dem Haus.
In etwa so: zwei Finger in der Marmelade.
In etwa so: ein Ellbogen im Badewasser.
In etwa so: eine Hand im Schubfach.

viii
Ich will dir was erzählen: Vor neun Jahren traf meine erste Liebe auf eine Falltür unter meiner linken Brust, fiel hinein und ward nicht mehr gesehen. Hin und wieder fühle ich in meinen Oberschenkel etwas krabbeln. Er sollte sich zu erkennen geben. Wahrscheinlich ließe ich ihn wieder raus. Ich hoffe, er und die anderen kamen sich nicht ins Gehege: Die vermissten Kleinstadtjungs, die tolle Mütter haben, die Mist verzapften und im Labyrinth meines Haars verloren gingen. Ich versorge sie angemessen, eine Scheibe Brot und wenn sie Glück haben, ein Stückchen Obst. Abgesehen von Johnny mit den blauen Augen, der meine Schlösser knackte und in mich hinein schlich. Kleiner Idiot im Keller meiner Ängste angekettet, ich hör Musik, um ihn zu übertönen.

ix
Klopf klopf.
Wer da?
Niemand.

x
Auf Partys zeig ich auf meinen Körper und sag Das ist, wohin die Liebe zum Sterben geht. Hallo, komm rein, fühl dich wie zu Hause. Alle lachen, denken, das sei ein Scherz.

Aus dem Englischen von Ron Winkler
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7 / 9
nächstes Gedicht
(Conversations About...)   
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Warsan Shire

photo © private
* 01.08.1988, Nairobi, Kenya
lives in: London, United Kingdom

Warsan Shire was born in 1988 in Kenya to Somali parents, she grew up in London, where she still lives. She won her first prize at an international slam event and is now the editor of the magazines Literary arts mashup and Spook. She leads workshops, in which poetry is used as a tool to try to overcome personal traumas.

Her poems have been published and featured in various literary publications, such as the Poetry Review, Magma and Wasafiri as well as have been  featured in the collections Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011) and Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe, 2014). Poems of her have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish and Estonian etc. 

 photo © private
Publications
  • Teaching my Mother How to Give Birth

    London: flipped eye, 2011

  • Our Men Do Not Belong To Us

    Prairie Schooner, 2014

  • grief has it's blue hands in my hair

    London: flipped eye, 2015

  • Her Blue Body

    Flap Pamphlet Series

    London: flipped eye, 2015

  • Penguin Modern Poets 3: Your Family, Your Body

    by Malika Booker, Sharon Olds, Warsan Shire

    Penguin, 2017

  • Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

    Poems

    Random House, 2022

  • Haus Feuer Körper - Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

    (Englisch-Deutsch)

    Mit einem Nachwort von Sharon Dodua Otoo. Aus dem Englischen von Muna AnNisa Aikins, Mirjam Nuenning, Hans Jürgen Balmes

    Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2022

Awards
  • 2013 Inaugural African Poetry Prize (Brunel University)

  • 2013 First Young Poet Laureate for London

  • 2014 Queensland (Australia’s) Poet in Residence

Links
  • Warsan Shire @ Twitter

  • 'Music Warsan Shire writes to'

  • Warsan Shire @ Bandcamp

    warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of being lonely)

  • Warsan Shire and Beyoncé: Superheroes for Our Time

    @ Literary Hub

  • Article about Warsan Shire in The Guardian

  • Warsan Shire @ goodreads

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