Sunday, August 17, 2025
No Exit; be seeing you
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
"Swing Plow" by Mohammed Khair-Eddine
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Mohammed Khair-Eddine, photograph by Sophie Bassouls |
When the sea salt seen and reviewed
judiciously by the ruin of your tongue—
hearts open to absent millipedes—
when the manure that feeds your life
when the woman and her retinue of lithobies
by these streets where delirium streams
—skulls shattered against the wall, knives unsheathed
by the silence gorged with laughter
from your head that retains nothing from me but my glimmer!...
When the city obstructs the sky with the guts
and the vomit of children killed
on the jaundice of my smile—
splendor!
when I repress your fear
with a comma from which oozes your sour blood!...
When the country produces its death, standing
on it alone like pomegranate wasps…
when the storm lays down its law to the teapot…
when the wells stink, when najas
drink the mothers’ eye…
The South bursts into a thousand rapiers
ruffling your nerves…
and the swing plow exults on the flat stone where errs
a people hung to deleterious stars.
This people, do you know it? No! You have only
glimpsed it overturned by a car.
A woman, thin and beautiful, watched the worker
die… His calves brown and salient
against the light on the blood
that flowed on the pavement. The car shone
under the four o’clock sun.
The child of the rich played with the river’s mud.
He was happy. The whole summer abused his little and
golden body.
The child of the poor, who has never crossed the
mountain,
sang and carved reeds. He paddled and fished
quietly. He was punished.
The one you love is a carrier of cloves
and nails and rings and night laughter;
a torrent of pebbles rolls in her clear eyes:
she is the indispensable dress of the day.
I know that your license slipped, nude woman, over you..
at the edge of the waves flapped like obese jellyfish.
I know that Time exists,
wearing sabers, sitting on the skin of bitter peoples.
and this brat who glows on your rampage,
o mother!
Snakes, scorpions, rats themselves,
all slobbered, stroked my humid wounds.
My destiny was debated under the grindstone, a crackling
barley was crushed.
And women sang. An old leper told
his memory to the road, “There is nothing beyond
that mountain”
Later, I discovered the world as it is.
[From the collection Résurrection des fleurs sauvages Éditions Stouky (1981)]
Sunday, February 16, 2025
"Barrage" by Mohamed Khair-Eddine (1941-1995)
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Mohamed Khair-Eddine |
horse
death
rogue
syrtes
under my nails
jackal of the race of great wickedness
God dies without a spark a log in his arms
between my skin and me
rises high in the vine
and the visages
one by one
all thick
lacquers are poured
all over the walls
a thousand prisons
lynching
casbahs unearthed by a hurricane
the eye is missing here
a stiff fist
I cling to nothing
and suddenly the worms
of childhood
creep of green silts
winds
I lie above
abrupt torrent
the lost rose
becomes tongue
then junk
hi hyena
I drink tonight the defended alcohols
fair word
unfair word
sit down
toads along my
spine
eyeglasses shatter as stars
shrapnel
like folk dances
ah this South between my stiff legs
this mouth expelled from my saliva
women thus climb the hurdles
electrons
butterflies
veins darkened without bearing
forgotten in some street
under a magician fresco
where to break is to abolish the laws
ignorance
retractile sea not
simply city without city
and man without man
shadow falling into long chaps
a ship is going to leave the port of my attachments
what a villain that one who talks about
setting
fire
to the black cat popular
for its intimate
and mysterious meow
i stop
be quiet
remember
imbecile
they prepare an ax for my language
they dethrone a king i crush his wealth
i am the black ox you are looking for
evaded from memories in rubble
and torture
whereas earth is no
more earth
stone
no more stone
grilled by the cherguis
swallowed
like dawn that makes your face shine
you
delirious woman
you
moaning beast
i
acrid standing in the thickness
of my entrails
reeling
chewing scrap
negative body
i devastate the rooms
they throw down the cargo of vices
sweat and heat
ah
purulent gaze
i sow
sow again
the waste these
fields
ancient swords
cannons
mosquitoes
cramps
throughout a flight of angry stars
the gentleman feeds on cabinets
he ends with an apostrophe
bangs in the depths of another gentleman
behind me
at the bottom of me
standing over me
a satyr escaped from a cold book apparently
wrings my neck
me
an ember
hi hyena
drink me all
dawn will break in one of my wrinkles
nothing to be done
they go back up
crabs
cylinders
fumes
dresses
give me your voice sir
I want to hear mine
a lightning
wreath
spiral that soon squeals
all the kids in hell
the
city
remorse
hyena give me your elastics
and let’s drink dawn
how double and fresh and slow dawn is
to your nostrils
*chergui: The east or southeast desert wind in Morocco.
[From the collection Soleil arachnide, Éditions du Seuil (1969)]