Poems of Songs and Elegies
These poems were written in the years between 1986 and 1996.
Good morning the thresh holds
Good morning the thresh holds
A Picture in the Mirror
After a long night, Who lit fire in our chests And drove us to clear sad fog? Who caused the mess And why should we immigrate And crave for our land And frorn whorn do we seek protection In the desert Who destroys Fruits that corne and go But the sadness Which is relaxing here On an old bier And on our chest.
Blaming Mr. (X)
You were not guarding the roorns As you pretend You did not have a desired slogan Or a motto Which saves you But You were a minaret In a desert.
A Blame.. Once Again
You know that rny hand Got indulged in absence You know that the villages of the North Are still refining their nails You know that Danube’s borders And that purity of intentions Ail were But a paralyzed painting and a door, Oh my friend! you know That we were but dust.. Dust, So why Do you buy the ape From the court of “liberty” And laugh? Is it because you became a Messiah Defending the deeds of your own hands? You know My friend That what ties us Was a love So beautiful That grew And Died.
A Face in the Throng
As if I am leading to a sad house, As if I am a night shadowed by its guils And guarded by moaning, As if I am walking towards water No trees and no leaves And no fruits and figs, As if I Lost my past “Oh seasons ofpride” Or got hunger when hunger died, As if I saw my face In the streets and wreckage, And saw terrors, rai and a crisis coming And saw plates Fruits and fig And once your face shows From within my holes Smiling like fog My voice evaporates And from on my eyes Darkness clears.
1988
An Elegy to Small Things
(To the spirit of an old acquaintance)
As if you poured tea in the glass And fled To a desired insomnia, As if you blazed the fuel’s fire, And walked on rock Tracing for a stone or an inanimate, As if you switched off your stony lantern And sat down seDing taxes And deposed your friends when you threw You threw nothing As if you kindled your first ember When you put off your shoes And descended the way you like As if you sunk in our blood And abridged distance Once this affection feil out of you In dry stone or dust As if you made me choose To be or not to be To hope or halt To be crushed under your shoes Or betray. You who is bathing quick You the lost one Sleep consoled May be you’ll regain your eloquence And your senses Or You may be lost.
1994
The poem and his transformations
Trembling
How could I Order ber papers In tbe dark, How could I Reveal its secrets, And sounds of exiles Are stricken deep between us, How could I Fix ber feet While she js sleeping Sleeping Sleepy. E se ap e Perhaps... A sad evening chooses me, Perhaps A round stone Will trace my hiding place Perhaps, I will disappear Like a minaret In the desert Perhaps... My letters would fetch me In cracks Or in tbe wall An illusion 0f tbe two of us On whose illusive body Air relaxes, In whose eyes Illusion grows And Doesn’t Doesn’t Look back.
Pouring Out
Ram, Flows on frost And li]ies Die Ram, Fails on predecessors’ chains. Oh river of slaves, And mother’s pain Which is filiing the rooms The buts And the obstinate night. Ram fails on frost, And shakes my pens My illusions And my papers, I am travelling in a nation That was sold by the Hexes and Bedouins I am travelling In a nation That chews cactus And obstinate sadness I am travelling in my insanity To a far abode.
Translated byJaouad Radouani
