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Lyric for the flooded, colonised and coloniser

This is a headshot by Shailja Patel, a queer Kenyan feminist activist writer. She's looking at the camera with a closed-mouth smile.

Queer Kenyan feminist activist writer, author of Migritude

This image is the title card of a video that was made for a poem called The flooded, colonised and coloniser by Shailja Patel, a queer Kenyan feminist activist writer, author of Migritude. In the background we see a flooded area. People are holding on to what seems to be a hand rail while waters rush through them.
This is a headshot by Shailja Patel, a queer Kenyan feminist activist writer. She's looking at the camera with a closed-mouth smile.

Queer Kenyan feminist activist writer, author of Migritude

    Editor’s note: In the past few weeks, heavy rains in central Somalia – following the country’s worst drought in 40 years – caused the Shebelle river to burst its banks and flood the city of Beledweyne. At least 22 people died and over a quarter of a million are displaced. In the north of Italy, Somalia’s former coloniser, heavy rains following extreme drought caused Italy’s worst floods and landslides in 100 years. Fifteen people have died, and over 20,000 are displaced.

    UMBRIA, Italy

    A Kenyan poet reflects on flooding in Somalia and its former coloniser, Italy.

     

     

     

    I know the violence of water. 

    Twice I've stood, ankle-deep, in Nairobi homes

    as it cascades down inside the walls, surges

    under doors, spurts and sprays 

    from ceiling light fixtures. Wondering

    stand and drown 

    or move and be electrocuted?


     

    I know the force of landslides.

    Betrayal that shatters the faith

    all other faiths build upon. The soil

    you stand on, eat from, turns on you.

    The very words you use for solid

     – earth, ground –

    liquify to swallow you.


     

    I know the trauma of unhoming.

    Grab what you can, eyes ahead.

    Don't look back. Don't think. Don't feel.

    One foot in front of the other

    as you chant inside your head 

    I'm alive 

    we're alive

    we are going to survive


     

    I know the shock of abandonment.

    When where you live is no longer

    profitable for multinationals.

    After they've chopped down the trees

    built over riparian land

    stratosphered the rents

    the corporations pack up. 

    Foreign embassies pull out.

    Leave you in the devastation.


     

    I know the outrage of erasure.

    Floods in Italy: front page news. 

    Floods in Somalia: Development section

    sponsored by the same billionaire who brought you

    vaccine apartheid and GMOs.


     

    I know the iterations of Empire.

    The deadly calculus of 

    face starvation here

    or risk drowning in the Mediterranean?

    Only to face another drowning 

    there.


     

    I know the lanes of genre.

    The words climate imperialism 

    global financial infrastructure

    IMF debt relief, emissions 

    carbon footprint, don’t belong 

    in poetry. Save it for 

    an op-ed. Catalogued rage

    is clumsy and didactic.


     

    I know the grief of the disposable.

    As the one percent colonise other planets

    we howl the destruction of ours.

    As colonisers militarise borders

    criminalise the colonised

    strip us, then doom us to die, we 


     

    know the salvation of human hands

    wielding shovels and oars, 

    ropes and pumps;

    the grace of outstretched arms.

    We know the power of hearts to reach

    from Beledweyne to Faenza.

    From New Orleans to Mogadishu.


     

    We are not all in the same boat.

    Not even in the same ocean.

    But we can choose

    we can choose

    to stay porous. 
      
     

    Shailja Patel is currently a fellow at the Civitella Ranieri residency programme in Italy.

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