Excuse Us & The Dead People of Mogadishu
by Marco Cinque, translated by Alessandra Bava
[translated poetry]
Excuse Us
Excuse us for fleeing
the wars that you fed
with your own arms
Excuse us for getting poisoned
with the toxic waste buried
by your powerful industries
Excuse us if you’ve bled
out our land, depriving us
of any possible resource
Excuse our poverty
daughter of your richness
of your neo-colonialisms
Excuse us for being massacred
and for disturbing your vacation
with our invisible blood
Excuse us for occupying
your detention centers
with our filthy bodies
Excuse us for breaking our
backs in your tomato fields
slaves without any right
Excuse us for living in
your tin huts
stacked like beasts
Excuse us for our presence
that causes each of your crisis
and doesn’t make you live well
Excuse us if your laws
aren’t strict enough
and many of you would love the gallows
Excuse us for existing,
for breathing, for eating
even for daring to dream
Excuse us if we didn’t die at sea
and if we did, excuse us again
the impudence of informing you.
The Dead People of Mogadishu
Are unlike those in Las Vegas
killed by an American armed to
the teeth by his own government
the dead people of Mogadishu are shadows
figures told to be forgotten
as a teleshopping of pain
to the global rhythm of a remote control
the dead people of Mogadishu are shadows
no keyboards cry pity for them
no painted flags bloom for them
on faces flaunting fake tears
the dead people of Mogadishu are shadows
invisible ruins to indignation
nobody sings their torn apart spoils
or tells their stories, we know
the dead people of Mogadishu are shadows.
Scusate
Scusate se siamo fuggiti
dalle guerre che voi nutrite
con le vostre stesse armi
Scusate se ci siamo avvelenati
con i rifiuti tossici sotterrati
dalle vostre potenti industrie
Scusate se avete dissanguato
la nostra terra, deprivandoci
di ogni possibile risorsa
Scusate la nostra povertà
figlia della vostra ricchezza
dei vostri neo-colonialismi
Scusate se veniamo massacrati
e disturbiamo le vostre vacanze
col nostro sangue invisibile
Scusate se occupiamo
coi nostri sudici corpi
i vostri centri di detenzione
Scusate se ci spezziamo la schiena
nei vostri campi di pomodoro
schiavi senza alcun diritto
Scusate se viviamo nelle
vostre baracche di lamiera
ammucchiati come bestie
Scusate per la nostra presenza
che causa ogni vostra crisi
e non vi fa vivere bene
Scusate se le vostre leggi
non sono abbastanza severe
e molti di voi vorrebbero la forca
Scusate se esistiamo
se respiriamo, se mangiamo
persino se osiamo sognare
Scusate se non siamo morti in mare
e se invece lo siamo, scusate ancora
l’impudenza d’avervelo fatto sapere.
I morti di Mogadiscio
Non sono come quelli di Las Vegas
ammazzati da un americano armato
fino ai denti dal suo stesso governo
i morti di Mogadiscio sono ombre
numeri detti per essere dimenticati
come una televendita del dolore
al ritmo globale del telecomando
i morti di Mogadiscio sono ombre
per loro le tastiere non dicono pietà
non fioriscono di bandiere dipinte
su volti che ostentano finte lacrime
i morti di Mogadiscio sono ombre
macerie invisibili all’indignazione
nessuno ne canta le spoglie straziate
o racconta le loro storie, lo sappiamo
i morti di Mogadiscio sono ombre.
Translator’s Statement:
Marco Cinque is a major Italian activist poet and his poems explore themes dealing with human, civil, and environmental rights. His poetical world centers on the perspective of the “last ones” of any rank and latitude.
Cinque is a funambulist of the word and layers of meaning lie deep in each of his lines. Translating his poetry is a sort of tightrope walking exercise, moving along the rope of analogy, striving to say exactly the same thing. But, above all, I have tried to be as faithful as possible to Cinque’s voice that is the bearer of a deep, poignant message and the real core of his poems.
“Excuse Us” is a powerful poem on migrants—a topic that is very dear to Cinque—and the subject of one of his most touching books Mari e muri (Waves and Walls). The Mediterranean Sea has become over the past few years the deadliest migration route in the world and Cinque highlights the devastating reasons behind this perilous choice. His irony is clearly directed to the reader, disguised through the sense of guilt of the migrants who must excuse themselves for having fled their homeland for a variety of reasons, including to escape persecution, conflict, famines, droughts, economic instability, and lack of opportunity. The repetition of the words “Excuse us” makes the reader more and more aware of how cynic the world we live in is: victims are forced to feel guilty whereas Westerners have clearly lost their sense of humanity and pleas for help leave them indifferent and undisturbed.
“The Dead People of Mogadishu” deals with victims of terrorist attacks and how, again, Westerners react differently whether such attack takes place in Africa or in the Western world. If we cry: “The horror! The horror!” for people who have died in Las Vegas, we hardly raise our voice for the people killed in Mogadishu. These are indeed, as Cinque writes “figures told to be forgotten / as a teleshopping of pain / to the global rhythm of a remote control.”
Alessandra Bava is a poet and a translator from Rome. Her translations from and into English have appeared in Italian and American journals such as Waxwing and Patria Letteratura. She has edited and translated A New Anthology of American Poets (2015) and most recently Anthology of Contemporary American Women Poets (2018), which includes work by Nikky Finney, Joy Harjo, Patricia Smith, Natalie Diaz, Diane Seuss, as well as others. She is currently writing the biography of a contemporary American poet.
Marco Cinque is a poet, a photographer, a performer as well as a musician from Rome. His work has appeared in many publications both in Italy and in the States. He has been defined by San Francisco Poet Emeritus Jack Hirschman as “a social poet whose every breath is grounded in the revolutionary turning of the pages to the new tide of revelation.”