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from "Les Leçons d’Edgard"

Si chanter mon amour c’est aimer ma patrie,
Je suis un combattant qui ne se renie pas.
Je porte au coeur son nom comme un bouquet d’orties,
Je partage son lit et marche de son pas.
 
Sur les plages l’été camoufle la misère,
Et tant d’estomacs creux que le soleil bronza
Dans la ville le soir entrelace au lierre
Le chardon de douleur, cet unique repas.
 
Nous pouvons oublier dans un baiser facile
Le sang de Diên Biên Phu ou celui de Casa,
Il vient toujours un temps où la beauté s’exile.
 
Un temps où la colère nous arrache à nos draps.
Lors je perds, me plains et retrouve au combat
Le droit de te chérir et de saveur notre île. 
 
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Poetry From the June 2012 issue: The Queer Issue III

Jean SénacJean Sénac

Jean Sénac (1926–73) was a Francophone Algerian poet who published a number of poetry collections during his life, including Poèmes Illiaques, Avant-Corps, La Mythe de la Sperme-Mediteranée, and Dérision et Vertige.  He founded the literary magazines Soleil, Terrasses, and Galery 54.  His collections Les Désordres and Corpoème were posthumously published, as were collections of his critical prose and journals.

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Translated from FrenchFrench by Douglas BasfordDouglas Basford

Douglas Basford’s poems, translations, and critical prose appear in Poetry, Western Humanities Review, Two Lines, Subtropics, the Hopkins Review, the Texas Review, Smartish Pace, Diagram, The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry, and elsewhere.  He has received scholarships and awards from the Sewanee and Bread Loaf conferences, the Summer Literary Seminars, and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund.  He teaches at SUNY-Buffalo, founded and co-edits the online poetry journal Unsplendid, and is reviews and prose editor for the National Poetry Review.

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