Mohamed Ellaghafi

The Saxophonist

I and the water are the same

Both of us draw our image from love

Praise be to the light

to the first sight

to the bashfulness lying in the eyes

to a metaphor estranged in the courtyard

of illusion

O lineage that believed in the stone

and the civil status register

and the coffin of last year’s September

and the signs of those returning

from the exile of legends

and the chaos

of the new conquerors

No room now accommodates the lovers’ activists

and no voice of the dead invades the midday nap

and no poetic text

is inspired by absence in the presence 

of a whore practicing the hunt of seasons

Perhaps what is to come is fiercer 

than the claws of the owner of the heavenly boat

She doesn’t need a mask

and the moss was heavenly in turn

astonishing with a face where the wind whistles

And here I remember the face of my friend who was lost to diving

I need how many extraordinary lifetimes

to find you in the reckless cup

my friend, resurrected briefly – trifling with nothingness

inciting forgetfulness

and disobedience

and arrogance and pride

and dancing with the air scented

with the fragrance of women violated by the night

Thanks to the saxophonist

the exquisite display of splendor

Penetrating

is the question of violation within you.

About to Depart

Love

is everything in this bag

And this rain falling in your eyes

might be enough

for a rose to bloom

in the corners of the heart

My dear

Love is a language against war

I will be careful at the station

Too careful

The bag

will never change

But I fear

that

the water in your eyes

might change.

Translated by Hassan Yarti.

Mohamed Ellaghafi a Moroccan poet, writer, and publisher, was born on December 7, 1960, in Casablanca. He is the founder and current president of the University of Moroccan Creators and the founder of the National Poetry Award in Morocco. He has published more than fifteen books, ranging from poetry to short stories, and has participated in significant national and Arab poetry gatherings. He is considered one of the pioneers of modern poetry in Morocco, with his beginnings tracing back to the early 1980s as the founder of the (Five Senses) poetic movement, an artistic movement that emerged to align with the course of modernity.

Currently, he publishes in the Qatari magazine Doha, the London-based newspaper Al-Zaman, and the Egyptian magazine Al-Ahram. He was also honored by the Moroccan Ministry of Culture in 2019, in Beirut and Cairo in 2014, and by several prestigious associations both nationally and internationally.

His works have been translated into several languages, including English, French, Persian, German, Albanian, Italian and Korean.

Sincerely Thanks:

Maria Teresa Liuzzo–Italy.