Wafa'a Lamrani: The eight day

The eighth day

"And he said to me: the day of death is the wedding day
and the day of solitude is the day of cheerfulness."
Al-Niffari

1 Root

I was born of a sentiment that resembles neither love nor hatred; it often resembles pride.
They did not want me, but I came. By force I emerged the moment I desired.
Before the beginning I identified with defiance
I announced that I, together with the age, were split on the edge of alienage,
That I, together with time, were forever two times. . .

2 Genesis

From insight I initiate
My genesis
I extend along a space narrower than the eye of the needle,
I feign permeation into my own substance.
The wind of the hollow comes from neither Al-Sham nor Al-Maghreb*.
Thus do I depart:
Departure could not carry me away,
Nor could transit escape me,
Nor even could arrival entomb me.

3 Body

Whenever the voice of the body waxes ecstatic
The femininity of wisdom blossoms
And with roses covers those of its own parts
That remain dreamy in their coyness.
I saddle the footsteps for craving . . .

4 Love

My free tender heart
I have posted on the highest summit of the Atlas Mountains,
For the stinking hyenas
Are accustomed to decadence
And heights usually make them feel
Dizzy and nauseous . . .
My heart is a flower mined with fragrance
But the picker is a chronic common cold!

5 Semiotica

I emerge out of the blast of a time
That comes not,
I tame the leakage of seconds,
I spill them as signatures of a lifetime
Crammed with departures . . .

6 Bleeding

The loneliness of the evenings consumes me,
It nibbles at my passion
And then casts me off as a fragment
For the fugitive glow.

7 Pattern

If there were a meaning
If there were a colour
If there were a day
Not the Monday mail
Not the Tuesday train
Not the Wednesday laundry
Not the Thursday meeting
Not the Friday nausea
Not the Saturday loneliness
Not the Sunday ennui.
Oh, how weary is the Sunday afternoon . . .
If there were a face instead of a face,
A figure instead of a figure,
A lifetime instead of this lifetime,
A time instead of this time,
A sun instead of the sun,
An earth instead of the earth,
If there were an air that is really like air . . .
I am weary of what's around me, weary of parts of me, weary of my entire self.
I am weary of being a muse for poets, weary of the earth that is not up to me, weary of the sky.
I am weary of my colleague, who backbites me, and of the street that molests me,
of my brother who bothers me and never cares for me.
I am weary of my dwelling and of my time.
I am weary of weariness and of myself,
I deny all conditions and am weary of even denial.
If there were a day,
A colour,
A meaning . . .

8 Coronet

What does the wisdom of the body say?
"Forlornness is pleasanter than weariness,
Gentler than rock."
This is why the eighth day is mine:
So that the letter may on that day impregnate me
And I give birth to twins
So that death may on that day utter me
And I thus get cured . . .