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.