Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine
Translated by Baba Badji
Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine is a Moroccan poet, born in 1941 in Tafraout; he died in November 18, 1995 in Rabat. “Black Nausea” is from Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s Soleil arachnide, (1969).
Black Nausea
I
One open prism placed at random from the thistles
and no
reason to live
except that I go blindly but more
ferocious than all locusts
absent from uproar
almost uninterrupted
at each corner a new sign
the streets cross me
in a hook
would it still be this
fishing at the top of the canes
no
the offerings lie
see their colors
I will start from zero if
needed
so that a window opens towards me
I give
it all on a wasteland
it would fall from the highest peak
would scatter
like
the swarm of bees that strike the blast
leave me alone
with my risks
my pain
my scars
I barely want
you brushing against me
and since we are inseparable
every day
realities
the shackles burning
but they are only men
the same ones that take back other position
before a people
his own wounds itch
somewhere the blind
of bellies
hollow
of dead cities in the estuary
you will survive
you are shaking
at the approach of the fruit
a chimney cuts hell
your sweat
burns with resin and iron
remains habitable
remains astonishing
laughter like sharp gravel
the terror in your
body like China’s ink
it’s time to get out
IV
my black blood is deeper in the earth and in the flesh of my people
ready to fight
my black blood seeds a thousand suns
the tragic field where the sky is
twirled
I do not want any more colors
or
of phrases crawling through terrorized hearts
you are taken
between me and my black blood
guilty of murderers, turned deceitfully to some obscure phase
my past also arises
equal to my
height
horrendous
like the day that reappears
dripping with ink
black
my black blood
on a hill
I will drag you in the mud made of my black blood
you and me
once bearers of myths
my black blood was the burning milk of the deserts
you and me
like a wind clashing
tons of sand
the eternities
molecules
separates us now
because I am the black blood of
earth and a people from which you walk
it’s time
the time when the river wept for having carried too much
like a snake
dark and threatening it crushes rocks and cedars
up to the sea which includes it
standing
present
together
you before the corpses whose load is my past
some corpses
whose worms are not dried up
judge me for being a victim
because my black blood flows in the earth and in the depths of
people
only witnesses
and my past sprang from the strength that broke it
V
You die
but I will
accompany you in this dust where you crawl
we will not reach
to the fruit that our eyes are bursting
we will fall at the foot of
the tree
we will give ourselves
since nothing will be given to us
you die
but I know you for a spring’s ruins
where the fruit will grow
with the warm palm
that will plant you in the midst of the tides
us
let us offer the clearest fruit of the future
since we only crawl
towards the tree that refutes us
since in its skin we have
discovered
a secret road that the branches ignore
you die
but I
am naked in the voracious grass that brings me down
and sharpens us together
we wash the holy stone
we crawl unanimously toward the tree that wobbles
to receive the last
drop of your black blood
and give future to
the strangest fruit
who speaks in the mouth
of thousands innocent dead in
our black blood
VI
a dog barks somewhere
in my heart
his language wants to harass
those who take me through
those who like to drink liters of
my black blood
a dog wants to track the jackals that kill
with their teeth biting off my
life
my camel life lost in its desert escape
where it worn-out my
black blood
its milk
O my ancestors
a short dog eyes remains out outdoor and its white milk is lost
a dog that no longer sees traces or paths
and yet the road verves up to the window
reports a misery
that
I do what you will do
the only certainty
the camel lost its
milk in the desert
maybe it sank under the sand like the
dark shade
perhaps its has filled my sorrows with the sea
black blood
which was milk
VII
syllable by syllable I build my name
yours is a long
undecipherable rosary
they are though names that leave
like bullets
which leave a stain in the atmosphere
there
are the names that highlight
names that cut earth
in two
my name is not an effect of temperature
rather against
nature
I pick up shocks
I shoot photocopies of my true self
see this suggestion
and would I be amputated by a word
if I do not
suffocate not asphyxiated by of the hours
cold but red bees
like the beetles that unleash trembles in space
I am expected elsewhere
but I prefer to go alone
so I incorporate myself
to my bleeding multitude
I am lying on a land of humid indifference
a land guilty of having given the grave image of my people
let me create a dwarf for the various facts
my room is
a perch
my electronic heart plugged into my ugly
death
I prefer to arrive on a land that knows how to say name
primitively
my opponent
VIII
a discharge was enough to get started
is questioning
the robots
the sphinxes
the crickets
they know how to enhance
the night
a poem sometimes comes to me like a holy stone
I do not tolerate anything
I’m not a legend
this word means to go against myself
ending with a sleep from which are born butterflies
I have enough
powder
call me the one who tries or who disturbs
in short
undesirable
but it is a bold faith
IX
the poet is you who loses you
at the same time as all the blood of the world
screen
injured
like this soldier
of 1941 who knocks on my memory
and no longer finds a broad outlet
that honors my life
open on a mess
in the country this year, the figs
ripen to the rock
it bleeds,
but in the lonely room
there is more
the poet is you
you are one who feeds on nostalgia
from the future
X
I will not describe a bird that collapses
catches fire
have I ever traveled farther than promises a field
no hands up, out of their living body
no flesh that does not know
point to discover the heart
I will make the journey
will pay for
everything to numb my pain
a deadly day passes faster than
its noise
and my shadow is always like an oil stain
my dead
I saw them
even lived
let them reinvent the holy stones
shake
Earth
if they leave do not repeat what the watchmen say
they
do not go back to their time now
do not give birth to ghosts
then they
pass and repassing
repressing the night
to break the lines of a ship
ready to double my life
XI
death
hyena volunteer
it’s you that I claim
declaring
ends up unearthing my futile doubts
should I
strike
whack you
I am reluctant
well-known hyena’s death
idioms from where I come
I know to chisel
I aggravate your profile
death
hyena black
but how to deport you
I can not send you back,
deport you
me without a country
without roof
death
stinky hyena
I will vomit you
wholly
will transfer you broken to your uncertainties
you were all embers
and the sand burst like a handful of salt
it was necessary to wait for me
to your anger
death I was innocent
the air bothered me
I was my
own ancestor
death
hyena charged with amulets
it is a hurricane
which nourish the Sahara
over the anger
now here we are
for a strange struggle
death
a corpse that keeps looking for others
where did I inherit you
fearful
hateful
the world what it’s
its fixity
its death
he refuted you
fearful
hateful
death is even unable to penetrate
a relief
he flees
and is not even vegetable death
you will never overcome the man
never radiant gold will flow in your breasts
rotten
death
hyena horrid
I will vomit you all
XII
I plotted against my memory
it may be that I find it emptied
rusty
in the pockets of a ranger
I will detach myself from its dough
follow this child alone who never returns
and builds death with
dry lizards
one day I will violate the eye that receives the sea
except the mobile mixture
it sets me crooked
I emerge brief
the
forehead extends to bubbles
made image in the arterial phrase where
the water wraps everything
I scald my fever
and white executioners
explained by sextants and jaws
if I sat outside
of my skin
for it’s to look at myself
let me spare myself
take exception
broken
the figures are
I proliferate in the egg
rolled
watertight
the rain showered me, a holy gardener
I install elsewhere thinning
speechless
elsewhere thumps to drowsiness
going to be naked in a window
and hangover hung me
here I end
a king remains standing
to a cliff
sweeps the tables
and spit out the apocalypse for fear of choking
a toad that’s at least blind
I walk in my heart
wrecked
as to boil
XIII
a woman appeared in the coast of mine
one
smuggler carried ergs
rest assured
never
never I have
been beyond my shadow
I vomited my pictures in the mouth
of a whore
near the clear village where your hip was lodged
I say
well the rock alone where I found the childhood dead alive
and scratched the
wind
closed
its spinal cord appears in the fossil museum
where every man every day discovers his model
a thick leaf blocks me
away from my word
caterpillar that eats me
in the fields where I seem hard to follow
I am here
great as your
picture
fuzzy as the cemetery that dares not contain you at all
expels you
from its oil shales and its anthropophagous plants
because you have broken from
me like a thick strand of hair
and your blood sank along my memory
to free the bird that calls out your death
XIV
transformed into an ice-cold night
memorable
I’m sinking
flows between these holy stones
the day shrinks
and suddenly in the depths of the centuries
a wild cat
Raven
crab
following the bone saws that prepare me
for a hostile architecture
of my content
I am a shrimp and my
stars are suppressed in tight paths
above the hiatus where they are embedded
the big metropolises of their bourgeoisie
lean and strong from
corpses who continue to put their anxieties to
a sick sea
green from the truths of solutions
blood now matters to me than everything
eyes burst
an image knot
eyes are guilty, thus they create shock
the word
electron that jumps from seaweed to algae
purges waterways
a
blood that wants to offer the sky at your fingertips
of the impossible peasant
to undo
nor by hail falls
nor by a slice of fig
there circulates
the breath of air tumors
including myself
all ceased
to a bite
XV
here are the most unexpected crucifixions
and the others
who returns from a funeral
who can no longer answer questions
more walking alone along the cypresses of death
it seems difficult
to remove it
he says
forgetting is to be in itself a dry torrent
he
says I’m dying of a thirst and I lost my tongue
leave me with him
to sit for the last time at the edge of his gaze
where I trembled
in your inaccurate bodies
split from their roots
in the space of history, a knife
raised on to the universe
XVI
I no longer tolerate a struggle that vanishes before term
die blocked
of its own senses, they are safer
because you destroyed the sentence
from its origin
monsters fallen from your shells
heavy from Abyss
that I must not perpetuate or extinguish
all
I did
elsewhere the shell which admits only its noise
it is better to chew heaven and earth
yellow smiles laugh at me
me standing stone overpowered by hot summer
me a well full
thus here is grass
my fight is not mule’s fat
not even a dove that’s darkened
the redness of its paws
it is a gesture of one who aspires to live without
other eternity than his own wounds
and a nail in the heart
become penetrable
in his hermit’s time he turns into very small veins
dried-up
no
the locust is no longer against
where would then be the home of our exile?
Born in Senegal, West Africa, Baba Badji is a Senegalese/American poet, novelist, scholar and a translator, and is currently a Chancellor’s Fellow and a 4th/year Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature, Track for International Writers at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. His research interests are: Caribbean Literature, Writing in West Africa, Black Cultures in France, the Black Diaspora, Négritude in Francophone and Anglophone Cultures, the poetic concepts of Négritude, The Francophone African Text-Translation and the Postcolonial Experience, and Postcolonial studies. He holds a BA from the College of Wooster, Ohio and an MFA in poetry & translation from Columbia University School of the Arts, New York City. He is fluent in French, Wolof, Mende, Bambara and Diola. His first Chapbook, Owls of Senegal was a finalist for The 2016 Seattle Review judged by Claudia Rankine. His translation has appeared on The 2014 Pen World Voice Festival. He is working on Ghost Letters a collection of poems, Museum of Exile a lyric poem in travel log, and Madame Diawara a novel about his grandmother.