Other things leave me, but [Hawaii]abides;
Other things change, but it remains the same.
For me its balmy airs are always blowing,
Its summer seas flashing in the sun;
The pulsing of its surf-beat is in my ears..
---Mark Twain
In Pohai Nani
In a bowl of fluted and folded fluffy bluffs blowing puff clouds
Sentinelled by plumy palms drowsing by the shore
Basking between the bambucha of the Pacific
Caressed by the Pacific blue zingy zippy zephyrs
Seared and sizzled and sealed by the Suzerain Sun
Surmounted by beauty
Surrounded by beauty
Surrendered to beauty
Beneath the beatific Pacific smile of an azure heaven
I begin every morning
With Bismillah
With peace
With papaya
With bashbash
With barwaaqo
In Pohai Nani
I begin the day
With a song of gratitude and praise of the Lord
For the kind mercy He has shown in lengthening out my days
I begin the day
With Bismillah:
With the name of Allah
The most merciful
The most magnificent
I begin the day
With the same Bismillah
With the same peace
With the same papaya
With which I would breakfast in Mogadishu
When Mogadishu was
Home
To Peace
To papaya
To bashbash
To barwaaqo
I thank the Lord that
Home
Like Allah
Like peace
Like bashbash
Like barwaaqo
Like pawpaw
As the British would say
As I was about to say
I thank the Lord that
Like Allah
Like papaya
Like peace
Like bashbash
Like barwaaqo
Home
Is a moveable feast
And my home now is Pohai Nani
Where I am pampered
By Allah
By beauty
By peace
By papaya
By bashbash
By barwaaqo
By the beatitudes of the baksheesh
Of the amazing Grace of God
Of the abounding Grace of God.
NOTES
Baksheesh: A Somali-Turkish-Persian-Arabic word that the English borrowed for good!
Bambucha: (Hawaiian) breasts.
Barwaaqo: (Somali) “is a combination of bar raindrop, & waaq one of the pre-Islamic Cushitic titles for God.” See p. 43 of Lewis. A Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism & Politics Among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa. London: Oxford University Press, 1961.
Bashbash:(Somali) ."is appropriately onomatopoeic for wet & luxuriant grass and vegetation.” Ibid., p. 43.
Bismillah: (Arabic) In the name of the Lord: Whenever believers begin any enterprise, they begin it with Bismillah which assures them success!
Pohai Nani: (Hawaiian) surrounded by beauty; the name of the retirement community in Kaneohe, Hawaii, in which Togane had spent the month of February, 2005.
