The Poem Under Gag
Hello sunshine of my country
how good it is to be alive today
so much light
so much light around me
Hello wasteland of my walk
you’ve become familiar to me
I pace briskly
and you fit me like an elegant shoe
Hello philosophical oxpecker oaf bird
tickling your ribs
with small distracted pecks
perched on that wall
that hides the world from me
Hello stunted weeds of the alleyway
shivering with small opalescent wrinkles
under the teasing caress of the wind
Hello big lonely palm tree
planted on your shaggy stilt
and opening at your crown
like a splendid tulip
Hello sunshine of my country
tide of presence annihilating exile
So much light
so much light around me
*
I have a thousand reasons to live
to defeat the daily death
the happiness of loving you
marching in step with hope
We need all our intelligence
for failure
disillusionment
stubborn facts that corrode
the dreams of naivety
and the path shortens
with this new lucidity
*
To learn silence
so that our words weigh
with all their burden of suffering
To tell the quintessence of our acts
Under the headband of the executioner
to know how to detect the banner
of our self-importance
*
Faced with time
memory
ebbs and flows
The present does not exist
unless you call the present
this acute awareness
of becoming
which strikes down the past
*
So many years
Of never having known
loneliness or boredom
So many shooting stars in my head
The bath of tenderness
during a song
whispers the strange happiness of the prisoner
*
Night has let loose its horde of doves
in the sensual forests of memory
You appear to me
terrifying with grace and promises
then it is the rite
interspersed with detonations
of jeering voyeurs whose masks stink
I am only half a man
*
Water flows in my hand
Iridescent droplets
greedily absorb the sun
To dream is only the reflection
of this near miracle
*
The smile blossoms by itself
I do not tear it from my face
forgotten along with all the mirrors
Inextinguishable smile
this is how I resist
*
The comrades are sleeping
Prison has stopped swirling in their heads
They sail with an open heart
on the high sea of our unexpressed passions
They are beautiful in their sleep
*
Every day
this blank page that taunts me
as if declaring the victory of silence
A thousand poems burst under the everyday rubble
The perverse times reeling out the words to say them
*
Still far off is the time of cherries
and of hands loaded with instant offerings
the open skies of fresh mornings of freedom
the speaking with joy
and the happy sadness
Still far off is the time of cherries
and cities made marvelous with silence
at the fragile dawn of our loves
the ravenous encountering
the crazy dreams become daily tasks
Still far off is the time of cherries
but I already feel it
throbbing and rising
all hot in seed
with my future passion
*
I’m doing fine
I tell you
Do not laugh
don’t doubt it at all
Hope
is serious
when it is rational
Of course it’s not an army
a magic wand
but it is a sure guide
an excellent dowser
Believe me
there’s room for hope
Maison centrale de Kénitra, 1978
Sous le bâillon le poème
Bonjour soleil de mon pays
qu’il fait bon vivre aujourd’hui
que de lumière
que de lumière autour de moi
Bonjour terrain vague de ma promenade
tu m’es devenu familier
je ‘arpente vivement
et tu me vas comme un soulier élégant
Bonjour pique-bœuf balourd et philosophe
perché là-haut
sur cette muraille qui me cache le monde
te chatouillant les côtes
à petits coups distraits
Bonjour herbe chétive de l’allée
frissonnant en petites rides opalescentes
sous la caresse taquine du vent
Bonjour grand palmier solitaire
planté sur ton échasse grenue
et t’ouvrant comme une splendide tulipe
à la cime
Bonjour soleil de mon pays
marée de présence annihilant l’exil
Que de lumière
que de lumière autour de moi
*
J’ai mille raisons de vivre
vaincre la mort quotidienne
le bonheur de t’aimer
marcher au pas de l’espoir
Nous avons besoin de toute notre intelligence
pour l’échec
la désillusion
les faits têtus qui corrodent
les rêves de naïveté
et de cette nouvelle lucidité
le chemin s’écourte
*
Apprendre le silence
pour que nos paroles pèsent
de tout leur poids de souffrance
Dire la quintessence de nos actes
Sous le bandeau du bourreau
savoir déceler le bandeau
de notre propre suffisance
*
Aux prises avec le temps
la mémoire
flux et reflux
Le présent n’existe pas
à moins d’appeler présent
cette conscience aiguë
de devenir
foudroyant le passé
*
Tant d’années
à n’avoir jamais connu
la solitude ou l’ennui
tant d’étoiles filantes dans ma tête
La vasque de tendresse murmure
en plein chant
l’étrange bonheur du prisonnier
*
La nuit a lâché sa horde de colombes
sur les forêts sensuelles du souvenir
Tu m’apparais
terrifiante de grâces et de promesses
puis c’est le rite
entrecoupé de détonations
de voyeurs hilares puant la cagoule
Je ne suis qu’à moitié homme
*
L’eau coule dans ma main
Des gouttelettes irisées
absorbent goulûment le soleil
Rêver n’est que le reflet
de ce presque miracle
*
Le sourire éclôt de lui-même
Je ne l’arrache pas à ma face
oubliée avec tous les miroirs
Sourire inextinguible
c’est comme ça que je résiste
*
Les camarades dorment
La prison a cessé de tournoyer dans leur tête
Ils naviguent à cœur ouvert
en haute mer de nos passions inédites
Ils sont beaux dans leur sommeil
*
Chaque jour
cette page blanche qui me nargue
comme pour décréter la victoire du silence
Mille poèmes éclatés sous les décombres du quotidien
Les temps pervers dévidant les mots pour les dire
*
C’est encore loin le temps des cerises
et des mains chargées d’offrandes immédiates
le ciel ouvert au matin frais des libertés
la joie de dire
et la tristesse heureuse
C’est encore loin le temps des cerises
et des cités émerveillées de silence
à l’aurore fragile de nos amours
la fringale des rencontres
les rêves fous devenus tâches quotidiennes
C’est encore loin le temps des cerises
mais je le sens déjà
qui palpite et lève
tout chaud en germe
dans ma passion du futur
*
Ça va très bien
je vous le dis
Ne riez pas
ne doutez point
L’espoir
c’est sérieux
quand il est rationnel
Bien sûr ce n’est pas une armée
une baguette magique
mais c’est un guide sûr
un excellent sourcier
Croyez-moi
il y a lieu d’espoir
Maison centrale de Kénitra, 1978
ABDELLATIF LAÂBI is a poet, novelist, playwright, translator, and political activist. He was born in Fez, Morocco, in 1942. In the 1960s, Laâbi was the founding editor of Souffles, or Breaths, a widely influential literary review that was banned in 1972, at which point Laâbi was imprisoned for eight and a half years. Laâbi’s most recent accolades include the Prix Goncourt de la Poésie for his Oeuvres complètes in 2009, and the Académie Française’s Grand Prix de la Francophonie in 2011. His work has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Turkish and English. Laâbi himself has translated into French the works of Mahmoud Darwish, Abdul Wahab al-Bayati, Mohammed Al-Maghout, Saâdi Youssef, Abdallah Zrika, Ghassan Kanafani, and Qassim Haddad.
GUILLEMETTE JOHNSTON is professor of French at DePaul University. A specialist in Rousseau and the Enlightenment, she also teaches French/Francophone literature and Liberal Studies courses on Patañjali’s Yoga Sutra, psychology of fairy tales, and Race, Power, and Resistance. She has lived in the French Antilles and Algeria, and published on Frantz Fanon (Dictionary of Literary Biography). Francophone courses taught address Islam and France, Haiti, identity shattered by immigration and colonialism, French Canadian literature, identity in the French Antilles, and Maghrebi novels of childhood. She co-edits JPSE: Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education, and has published (with Allan Johnston) translations in Metamorphoses, Ezra, Transference, and Milles Feuilles. She is author of Lectures poétiques: La Représentation poétique du discours théorique chez Jean-Jacques Rousseau and articles in Romanic Review, French Forum, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Pensée libre, Études Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the MLA Approaches to Teaching series, and elsewhere.
ALLAN JOHNSTON earned his M.A. in Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Davis. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Poetry East, Rattle, and Rhino. He has three full-length poetry collections (Tasks of Survival, 1996; In a Window, 2018; Sable and Selected Poems, 2022) and three chapbooks (Northport, 2010; Departures, 2013; Contingencies, 2015), and received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, Pushcart Prize nominations (2009 and 2016), and First Prize in Poetry in the Outrider Press Literary Anthology competition (2010). His translations and co-translations of poems from French and German are in Ezra, Metamorphosis, and Transference. He teaches at Columbia College and DePaul University in Chicago. He reads or read for Word River, r.kv.r.y, and the Illinois Emerging Poets competition, and co-edits JPSE: Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education. His scholarly articles have appeared in Twentieth Century Literature, College Literature, and other journals.
MICHELLE GEOGA is an artist and writer from Southwest Michigan. She has work in Cleaver, New American Paintings, Five on the Fifth, Bridge Eight and others. She has shown photography at the Center for Fine Art Photography and have paintings and collages forthcoming in LitBop, prose forthcoming in Gone Lawn. She has a BFA in art and MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute. michellegeoga.com
