Fatiha Morchid

Let’s rain

Translated from Arabic by  Norddine Zouitni

Marsam Edition, Rabat 2016

 

1

A heavy silence is spread out

And the sky is over-crowded

With our clouds

 

Revelation oozes

From the dumb

Pores

 

Enough!

 

Come let’s rain

And wet

The bed sheets with our reproach

 

2

 

My passion for rain

Frightens you

 

You who are eternally

Thirsty

For drops of dew

 

 

That you

Secretly sip

From the forgotten

Dawn buds

 

Wiping your lips

With one palm

While the other

Holds thorns

 

Over-confident

 

Sheltering yourself

From love

With an umbrella

 

3

 

Gather me up

A wild rose

From the spirit’s emptiness

 

 

Before my own feet

Trample me down

 

4

 

You search underneath my shirt

For the smell of your childhood

 

I search

Between your lips

For a poem

That looks like me

 

You want me to be another

 

I want a man

Who makes me become myself

 

5

 

The pillow leans

On our pain

And the bed

Vainly insists

On folding

Distances

 

While

Each of us

Embrace a secret journey

 

6

 

Is it your ghost

Or my shadow

That falls asleep

On my insomnia?

 

Or is it

A witness of absence

Looking for certainty?

 

7

 

O you! Taking shelter

Deep in the wound

That is rooted in me

As my belonging to your palm

 

I am some of your satisfaction

 

Are you satisfied then

With a female

Who conjures up the utmost limits

Taming them

On the domesticated thresholds?

 

My destiny

Is to invent whispers for your silence

 

And put my hand

In the blowing touch

So I might find you

 

8

 

No far-reaching limits

Tempt me

Except my journey

In you

Who are distant

Like my blood

 

Crowded with you

Are the senses

So where can I hide you

From the eyes of desire?

 

And how can I protect you

From my thirst

When you flow

Into my glass

And when moons

Turn in your head?

 

C

O

M

E   

 

Come, Let’s  answer

The call of drums

And drop down

The veiled speech

 

9

 

The note

Wanders away

From the poem

And the chord puts on mourning

 

I fear

Death stifles

What hasn’t been born

Between us

 

10

 

Only the sea

Worthy of my torment

 

I offer it

Every waking hour

Before the tears of the world

Wash me out

 

11

 

And I steady myself

Between a couple of tears

 

So the poem achieve its fullness

 

12

 

Do not close the door

In the face of the breeze

Our insides

Are squeezed by the heat

And the moon

Declined our company

 

Another night

Goes by

No virgin tears

No wailing

No shouts of joy

 

 

Come let’s chirp

The night birds

Are overcome by boredom

 

13

 

You soar further away

From my joyful sounds

Vertigo

Conquers me

 

Aren’t the nights

Enough,

That like mountain songs

Compete with the clouds

 

Come

In a last breath

To gather the shells of speech

In a necklace of kisses

 

14

 

Beside

A life wasted

In the unsaid

 

The wind lulls

A letter

 

That I pick up

 

For a second life

 

15

 

My throat is stifled

With buried moans

 

Shall I open up my chest to the wind?

 

Or fall down

Where

A dumb scar

Hides?

 

 

How can I

Uproot it

Without the earth

Bleeding

Beneath my feet?

 

16

 

And you ask me

To gamble a part of me

So I gain myself

 

Like a Sun

Eloquent in its silence

I love my weakness

And I am not ashamed of tears

 

17

 

Free

Of all sense of belonging

Like a suitcase

I roll down

 

Between one loss

And another

 

I see me through your eyes

So why go far

Ahead of me?

 

18

 

I don’t care

If you spare your water

 

Only fire has meaning to me

 

19

 

Here I am

Hanging my smile

On the peg of pain

And heading

To a virtual date

 

For such

Lipstick

Was invented

 

20

 

I walk fast

 

Behind a shadow

 

Devoted

To my hurting feet

 

21

 

I need a whole life

To recover

My childhood

 

You need a childhood.

To grow up in my heart

 

And we need death

To be worthy of love

 

22

 

Tired

The body breaks down

Under your coming back

 

Should it dance

Or pray?

 

And how could it endure

A joy

That sets fire

To the wreckage?

 

23

 

 

How much joy

Did I curb

So as not to lose

My belonging to you

 

Here I am

Restoring myself from you

So as not to lose

My ability to grieve

 

24

 

I save a memory

That betrays me

 

And rush naked

Towards the unknown

 

And in order to test

The rhetoric of moaning

I shed a letter

On the first line

Half through

My life

 

 

I wander beyond my limits

Searching for

A missing Childhood

And deceive myself

That defeat

Is better than

Desertion

 

 

I collect my lost part

In non-existence

I mummify it

So my illusion of life

Stays alive

 

25

 

Together

All is possible

 

 

Even separation

 

26

 

Yet

 

I dream

Of a window overlooking the sea

Of an affectionate fireplace

Of your hand removing rocks

Off my chest

 

 

I dream

Of a rainfall that tastes of your sweat

Of a night longer than my insomnia

And a flower vase

 

As in the oriental

Painting

27

 

I dream

Of climbing

The water stairs

Towards the horizon

 

Where

With the warmth of twilight

Your hand pulls me

28

 

Sustain me

My body waxed feeble

And a cloud in my night

Likes to sleep

On the grass of your chest

 

Sustain me

And drop

The paddle of questions

The Sea is tired

Of the overflow of my tide

 

 

Sustain me

For what Remains of tomorrow

And what was lost of yesterday

Waiting for you

 

29

 

And come let’s rain

Longing has ripened

In the vessels of the soul

And no lover compares to you