Mohammed Bennis

1948 / Fez

Bells

Ringing bells reverberate in my bosom
Many a sun strayed like me
Fields surrounding theatres
search for the meaning of 'to be'
the bells are palm trees
They are mirrors polished by a child
who rests calmly near the waves.
Be ready, O child
spread the first shade
carried by labyrinth's couches:
a blazing flame
that would settle down
in a silence form.
This night is a white horizon
A homeland creates my thickets
then it rises high above
no East whets its blade
or a tyrant's kingdom
I go on grabbing the commands of bells
to the palm trees
taking two hemstichs of my time
transforming it thereby
into the turning of a breath.
Often I see myself
a chain of sailing ships
a raging winds, for a genuine thirst
I feel I am whispering in my functioning organs
Mine is a phantasmic light
that clads me with the cloak of earth
How it happened that the ringing of bells
blend with an afflicted ear of corn
in the dense recesses of the darkened soil ?
The leaves of the world vitrify in the bells.

Translated by Noel Abdulahad
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