Nizar Kerboute translated from Arabic : Soumaya Khatibi

Poems

Nizar Kerboute,

September’s Sunshine

A crazy idea took hold of me

It was crossing the road…

Paying no attention to

Those sharing with me the voice of the wall

I left the evening’s newspaper

To the Rabat’s breeze to go through it

And disappeared in the echo

She didn’t grant me enough time

Neither to take photography of my wrecked memory

Nor to reread the draft

Where I’ve noted the address of my stranger body

My body which escapes my encounter

In the full day light

And waits the falling of the first piece of night

To knock on the door of my insanity

To smoke cigarettes

And sit in the bottom of a glass of air

III

I have tasted the first letter on her breast

……….

It was salty

The ocean’s noise on her skin

Moralities inside the blue

Temporary words, which immigrate

To her cursed hips

I am looking for serenity

To implant it in her southern shore

It will grow as an Atlas olive tree

And will be watered from my forehead’s rain

I will seek shelter under its branches

From the September’s sunshine

Time fall down before me

She walked out

From the ‘carré noir’

The wooden chairs followed her

With the cups of coffee

And Tea pots

She headed to the down town

The side walk followed her

And the light post

And the alabaster

…………

She turned right

And the street turned too

The alleys,

And the red traffic light as well

She bended out to pick up

Papers that fall down from her hands

The clock bended out with her

………

And forthwith, time fall down before me

‘Carré noir’: a café in the down town of Rabat City in Morocco

As if he was a poet

Traveling with his eyes

In the pain of the night

And disappearing in his watch

Weighing heavily on his forearm

As if he was a poet who has lost his way

To a freindly bar

Sharing with it his moments of delusion

And seasons of rainy solitude

He does not remember the features of the chairs

On which he seated with his faithful sorrows

Recalling the last time on which he forgot his appointment

With a little poem Imitating

The walk of Al- Mutanabbî

And the voice of a wounded metaphor

The words of which are not yet healed

Repeating to a solitary bottle of wine

What he has learned from some yellings

And titles of forgotten newspapers

On the way back at the first alley

After the silence

The finger he has put in the ashtray

Is no more beating as have accustomed him

The winter’s nights

He does no more attracts the beauties

To his apartment

On the ground floor

He becomes like the ash too

Spending his day

Looking for his color

That the crowd of bystanders covers

In the streets of Rabat

Why are you painting her nude like that?

My pen is traveling between your breasts

Looking for the writings of the city of Ur

And its engravings

That it is said they are the origin of the alphabet

He spends his days

Lost in the roads which surround you

Picking up your seasons in his bag

And getting on the morning train

Towards a feminine city

Famous for its chocolate

And its new year’s cake

- Which resembles to a branch of a pin tree-

Bohemian as usual

He does not count the distances

Accompanied by a friend named

"Desir"

That nobody can see

As in science-fiction movies

He speaks to her

Smiles to her

And when drinking a glass of bordeaux

He sends to her a kiss with the waitress

I have asked the pen

"Why do you paint her totally nude like that? »

It answers me

"Between your hands my life is short,

I will not waste it in compositions and meaningless introductions

What then is my sin if my ink adores the Woman?

Liking nudity in its exaggerated form

And talks about beauties who

Are flirting with him in the whiteness»

Bleeding

I woke up in the dawn on the rhythm of

The rain’s drops

Night chatting with the window’s glass

I get up from the bed

And walked to the kitchen

Opened the water tap….and let him bleed a while

I have put a glass under it so it can drink

And came back to sleep.

translated from Arabic : Soumaya Khatibi