Sososkin (Naked)
- Sososkin 1 [Naked]
| San a mi? | What am I? |
| Wan klodru doti nanga kra | A clot of dirt with soul |
| Wan libisma | A living being |
| Wan syatu bro | An instant breath |
| a mindri | among hope faith love and blessings |
| howpu bribi lobi nanga seigi | A scapegoat |
| Wan sonduboku | in the world’s pasture |
| a mindri grontapu wei | Deadwood on a tree |
| Wan dedetaki a wan bon | among God’s glory |
| a mindri Gado glori | Still I feel |
| toku m’ e fir’ mi sref’ | buried under the wind sun and rain |
| ber’ a mindri winti son nanga alen | like an overripe fruit on the ground |
| lek’ wan pori froktu a ondrogron | Let life be!2 |
| Libi! | Naked I was born |
| Sososkin mi si dei fesi Sososkin m’ e dede | Naked I’ll die |
| [Sranan] |
Johanna Schouten-Elsenhout (1910–1992 Suriname) published her first poetry at the age of fifty-two. Two of her collections of poetry have been published, Tide ete and Awase, both written in Sranan.
D. France Olivieira, a native of Cayenne, French Guiana, lives in Paramaribo. A Cultural Anthropologist and Public Health Specialist, he has published in the Journal of Black Psychology, written on the Sranan Language, and has translated Rights of Passage by Edward K. Brathwaite into Sranan. He hopes to complete translations into Sranan of the other two volumes of Brathwaite’s The Arrivants and of Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal.
Footnotes
1. Awese (Paramaribo, 1965). Rpt. Spiegel van de Surinaamse Poëzie, ed. Michiel van Kempen (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1995), 130. 2. Libi means “life,” “to live,” and “to leave alone.” [Translator’s note]
