Shadow
you
in a desire
for darkness
Night will close its voices to you
night will take pleasure in the dew
of its skin
volcanic
organ
its flow
of stones
***
The storm will be inside you
uncertain storm
of unexplored
senses
Heartbeat with a flame’s
silence
a thigh’s
curve
Night
will become
a punctual
reptile
Flees from us
reptile
reconstructed
refined
to a tilted
point
***
Granite
grounded our idle
thirsting
bodies
The lamenting
rain hastens
towards greenish
regions
We remain
in these hamlets
our limbs assembled
in the wind’s
dusk
***
I enter the beach
by the shore’s
bitter lip
The tide rises
in a celestial shudder
on the impermeable
sand
The star
with your face
wrinkles
and ripples
No trace
as wished
of its shadow
***
Come to the ridge
of night
a roaring star
That undulation
letting go
on the path
No one takes notice
desire, like leprosy
gnaws away the steel
No shadow
of a body
or a bee
A heap of prohibitions
heavy as lava
***
Milky down, uncertain
gestures
Night’s breathing
converges
on your skin
climaxes on your doorway
Your sigh
on the dew at dawn
With your
scent the plain will
make its beasts tremble
and flee
Its body on the bed
of forgetting
fecundates plural
horizons.
***
That “you” half-asleep
in the springtime
of shipwrecks
Tears are diluted
in the doorway
of your eyes
The wind ceases
its morbid
race
and you draw your dreams out
into a last
illusion.
***
You spring out of oblivion
in Nordic sunlight
You enter a life
encircled
by winter
The breath
of your lair
is equatorial
You spring out of yourself
like a shadow
embraced by the night.
***
Your planet
mirage-tinted Grenada
watched for by the orchard
I can’t invent
a different season
for your moods
The storm wavering
gently
at a persistent zenith
Your jungle whose shadow
visions
the desert explodes
I’m at your feet
the worst
geographer.
***
I live
in my divine one’s
secret eternity
She tells me not to be
a holy land
or a mine of tenderness
She doesn’t tell
her objections are
unending echoes
My words are
futile drumming
to someone else’s beat
Not even a whim.
***
Synchronized
autumns are burning
I rinse my eyes
like an imperfect
mirror
They said they saw them
burning
brighter than daylight
They said they even saw them
dancing
in the crackling
boughs
Will my eyes see
across
autumn?
***
The silence of you
like the bite
of the ocean
I fall through the vertigo
of your mute
symphony
The shadows laugh at me
and your inconstant
gaze, curve
of indifferent
eyelashes
I’ll break my back
keeping only
my disarticulated
eyes.
***
I’ll climb
to your chasms of torture
where my eviscerated words
Prison is born of love
when love
goes native
You don’t betray
your soul
by wanting it
At the end of a chain
the walls are
damp
My body’s
useless
resistance.
***
To fear truly
the ruined act’s
unjust
resonance
The burned face
flees your presence
and your disgusted
caresses
Skin that furrows
with life’s
vast flights
I’ll live and not belong
to that morbid
bird.
***
To be
the forgotten landscape
the phantom opera
I’ll go and waltz
in the vanished
wadi
The waves
perhaps sleep through
my caustic
steps
I’ll make the earth
quake
under my feet
when the volcanic
wadi
flows up toward me
to wash out
its bed
***
I’ll leave my streets
to your secret
exploration
My dreams are only
tag-ends of amnesia
and you my
defragmented dream
Of my nights I’ve made only
a migratory
bird
who’ll leave you
to hang around
dubious mouths.
***
Forgetting is my slothfulness
since your too-
sweet laughter
can’t be
mine
I’m obliged to believe
in your nights
of escape
when my body
beneath you
was merely
landscape
My fingertips have forgotten
every suspect
image.
***
I’ll tune in my ear
to the low notes
of hours spent wanting
An argument will be made
against my harsh vocal
traumatism
I must say nothing
about my pale glimmerings
Clay put to death
under the sterile
snow
I must say nothing
about my unaesthetic
words
***
In the shadow of Grenada
my body shudders
with frostbite
My breath sediments
in the light
of the tropics
Life
in the din of time
stretches out into infinite flagellation
Life
in a heart’s din
leaves the caravan
in the fading sand.
***
In the shadow of Grenada
words explode
on an undefined
shore
The volcanic
organ
on the valley
of glistening
waves
In the shadow of Grenada
a star
signals me
I’ll burn my velvet words
“A l’ombre de Grenade” © Samira Negrouche. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2019 by Marilyn Hacker. All rights reserved.
