"Medicine" a poem by Kebedech Tekleab

Kebedech Tekleab is an Ethiopian painter, sculptor, and poet based in New York. She was born and raised in Addis Ababa and because of her militant student activities during the period of Derg, she was forced to flee her country in 1979, through Djibouti, where she was captured by Somali soldiers who at the time were engaged in a border conflict with Ethiopia. She was held in a prison and concentration camp for ten years until the International Red Cross took over the camps in 1988. She eventually made it to the USA, where she now works as an artist and teaches at a community college in New York. This poem, translated from Amharic by Chris Beckett, B. Selassie, and herself, is dedicated to the Ethiopian officers kept for eleven years in solitary confinement in Lanta Bur military prison in Somalia.

Who else but a man
can cure a man?
can ease his body’s ills
and his mind’s abuse?
for his eyes
horizon, edging sky,
is a tonic,
for his feet, the steps
of never-ending
journeys,
for his thirst
a belly of sweet water,
grain for hunger,
lungfuls of fresh air for joy . . .
but let his
vision
be restricted
feet fettered
stomach blocked
mouth dry
from hardly drinking
mind abuzz
and furrowing
with sadness . . .
still the worst cruelty
of all
is isolation . . .
oh! what medicine
replaces
that other person
in the room?