Translated from the French by Baba Badji.
This is part of our special feature, Beyond Eurafrica: Encounters in a Globalized World.
Black Nausea
I
One open prism placed at random from the thistles
………………………………………………………………and not one
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
III
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 the 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 unsteady
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
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 oneself
ending with a sleep from which butterflies are born
…………………………………………………………………………I have enough
powder
………..call me the one who tries or who disturbs
……………………………………………………………………………………in short
undesirable
……………………but it is a bold faith
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 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 up 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 revolutions laugh at me
me menhir overwhelmed by the 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
another 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?
Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine is a Moroccan writer, born in 1941 in Tafraout (Morocco), died November 18, 1995 in Rabat, Morocco (Africa)
Baba Badji is currently a Chancellor’s Fellow and a third-year Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature, with the Track for International Writers & a combined Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. His research interests are situated in 20th C American, African, Caribbean, Francophone Studies, Poetics of Exile & Poetics of Blackness, Modernism, Postcolonial Studies. 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.
Published on March 1, 2018.