- Wan bon
someni wiwiri
wan bon.
Wan liba
someni kriki
ala e go na wan se.
Wan ede
someni prakseri,
prakseri pe wan bun mu de.
Wan Gado
someni fasi fu anbegi
ma wan Papa.
Wan Sranan,
someni wiwiri,
someni skin,
someni tongo.
Wan pipel.
< R. Dobru 1965 in Sranan Tongo.
***
One of the first poems in a creole language which got me good. There is only one letter difference between artistic and autistic. If I am on the latter spectrum at all it is liminally, on the cusp of normalcy or more accurately normality. I do remain residually dyslexic and hence sensitive to things cognitively dissonant, such as the relationship between a standardized language and a creole “derived” from it. Hence my book Entwisted Tongues Comparative Creole Literatures.
Review
Dobru’s own translation:
One tree
so many leaves
one tree.
One river
so many creeks
all are going to one sea.
One head
so many thoughts,
thoughts among which one good must be.
One God,
so many ways of worshipping
but one Father.
One Surinam,
so many hair types,
so many skin colours,
so many tongues.
One people.
For those who are native speakers of Dutch but also those who might still be able to read it in the oblique way referred to above, here is a wiki on R. Dobru (1935-1983), erstwhile nationalist political leader and Minister of Culture in the early years of independent Suriname.
Among other things, Dobru plays on wiwiri: leaves, also hair, thread and wire < the SIL Sranan-English dictionary based on John Wilner’s 1994 Wortubuku fu Sranan Tongo.