Translated from Portuguese by Dan Hanrahan

I know you
by your scent,

by your clothes,
by your cars,

by your rings and,
of course,

by your love
of money.

By your love
of money

that some
distant ancestor

left you
as inheritance.

I know you
by your scent.

I know you
by your scent

and by the dollar signs
that embellish

your eyes that
hardly blink

for your
love of money.

For your love
of money

and all that
negates life:

the asylum, the
cell, the border.

I know you
by your scent.

I know you
by the scent

of pestilence and horror
that spreads

wherever you go
—I know you

by your love
of money.

Under your love
of money,

God is a
father so cheap

he charges
for his miracles.

I know you
by your scent.

I know you
by the scent,

of sulfur,
which you can’t mask

which clings to
all that you touch

for the love
of money.

For your love
of money,

you respond
with loathing

to a smile, to pleasure,
to poetry.

I know you
by your scent.

I know you
by your scent.

Smell one of you and
I’ve smelled all

of you who
survive only

by your love
of money.

For the love
of money,

you turn even
your own daughters

to hard currency,
to pure gold.

I know you
by your scent.

I know you
by your scent.

I know you
by the stench

of your rotting
corpse that

somehow
walks

for its love
of money.

^{Translated from Portuguese by Dan Hanrahan}

I am whatever you think a black man is. You almost never think about black men. I will always be what you want a black man to be. I am your black man. I’ll never be only your black man. I am my black man before I am yours. Your black man. A black man is always somebody’s black man. Or they are not a black man at all, but a man. Just a man. When they say that a man is black, what they mean is that he is more black than he is man. But all the same, I’m a black man to you. I’m what you imagine black men to be. I can spill onto your whiteness the blackness that defines a black man in the eyes of someone who is not black. The black man is the invention of the white man. It is believed that to the white man falls the burden of creating all that is good in the world, and that I am good, and that I was created by whites. That they fear me more than they fear other white people. That they fear me, but at the same time desire my forbidden body. That they would scalp me for the doomed love they bear for my blackness. I was not born black. I’m not black every moment of the day. I am black only when they want me to be black. Those times that I am not just black, I am as adrift as the most lost white person. I am not just what you think I am.

Translated from Portuguese by Dan Hanrahan

I died how many times
in the longest night?

In the motionless night,
heavy and long,

I died how many times
on the night of calunga?

The night does not end
and here I am

dying again
nameless and again

dying with each
hole opened

in the musculature
of the person I once was.

I died how many times
in the bleeding bruised night?

In the night of calunga
so long and so heavy,

I died how many times
on that terrible night?

The night most death
and there I was

dying again
voiceless and again

dying with each
bullet lodged

in the deepest depths
of what I remain

(and with each silence
of stone and mortar

that sheds the white
of your indifference

onto the shadow
of what I no longer am

and never will be again).
I died how many times

in the night of calunga?
In the brackish night,

night without end,
the oceanic night, all

emptied of blood,
I died how many times

in the terrible night
the night of calunga

in the Bairro Cabula?
I’ve died so many times

but they never kill me
once and for all.

My blood is a seed
that the wind roots

in the belly of the earth
and I am born again

and again and my name
is that which does not die

before making the night
no longer the silent

partner of death
but the mother that births

children the color of night
and watches over them

as a panther
who shows, in the light

of her gaze and in
the sharpness of her teeth,

just what she will do
if the hand of evil

even imagines
troubling the sleep

of her cub.
I’ve died so many times 

but I am always
reborn stronger

brave and beautiful—
all I know is to be.

I am many, I extend
across the world

and across time inside
me and I am so many

one day I will make
life live.

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Pour Ali la Pointe

Here where each day calls out to our suffering

Here where each step chains our desire for hope

Here where everything cries out misfortune violence famine

Here where blood is confirmed silently and grief gains ground

He died. Died buried under a pile of rubble

While he trampled hatred down with his proud blood

So that the roots of his impatient people

Would grow knotty in the shadow of the flag

Gray tears, so slow to cool

Endurances curved round the sacred fire

Because they wanted to condemn our long

Arid thankless processions to the shadows

Because they wanted to tear up our lives

At the borders of oblivion

Ali La Pointe, son of a land that took up arms

Sole penance, disturbing spacious nights

Who wrestled down infamy, devoured disdain

At first sight of their guns
 

Here he is indicting at one more meeting

Their blood-gorged breath; he is there

For those who know the universe at the dark hour

Of Servitudes

Furies of one shared past!

His face—mirror of cruelties—where a chorus of cries

Fuses our hope, sharpens our freedom

Here he is again, living hostage in the wrinkles around

Our eyes where the new sun has driven away

Shame and emptiness forever. I say: spotted, wrinkled, polished fruits.

We sow because death is determined

Because death is stronger than hunger

O mother country, he called you Certainty before his rapture

Then gave himself to the flames to restore

Your sovereign brightness.
 

Yesterday strapped down once more by insults of the lords and masters

Swallowed up by incest misery

He loved the humble, set tenderness free

Devoured the past

At the multiple hour of inheritance

When our joy tells the beads of present freedoms

When his name is whispered in our silences

I cry out: Child of the Casbah

Spring thaw on the ramparts

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

X
Who will tell the sun about my land
my harried medlar tree
my springtime without nervures 
my helpful hand
Who will recount my rootless
garden 
and my door open
to all comers
my night of faraway sounds

my wheat that absorbs
the hours 

Who will cure me
of my sequestration 
and sweet secret
—my monochrome dream

my space gone gray at the temples 
the barter of my frenzy

the slumber at the edge
of my well of fever 

My steppe with an abundance of laughter 
Perhaps it would be enough . . .
But I watch
time passing 

Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

The outflow of your drifting—
up until now you’ve slid along the road

I would like
in a faraway language
to tell you what I don’t
understand 

**
Nothing pulls you back from doubt any longer
from obsession 
from seeding 
your body is amnesia   plural   futile   limpid
a disappearance
stands in for space
stands in for an emptiness
to circle round 

**
Not visible   the sense
slumbers teeters on the edge
you expect nothing of the hours
not the days returned 
not daybreak
you expect 

**
There had been no
days without sand 
and you thought the sun
inexhaustible
you had not seen:
the lantern is cold 

**
Leaving you
clamber up your confusion
on the cord
of forgetting 
Leaving is 
all of life still
behind you 

**
What remains
to begin each morning 
at the same hour 
like 
starting from zero
to answer time’s memory loss
and the drift of ages
your mother, trembling
the genealogy of the worst
the disaster of the gods

to finish counting the remaining hours

**
You can’t bring yourself
to let go of the sky’s edge

at nine o’clock
this morning 
you hold the sailboat’s breath
head for the narrowest path
to redraw the mirage 

**
You ask yourself what is 
a place of your own 
if you must fade yourself out
unweight yourself of promises
yesterday you wanted to know if
and now you no longer know why
 
you should have dived in with no expectations 

^{Translated from Portuguese by John Keene}

I am a black renegade
I refuse the mirror daily
Which tries to massacre me inside
Which tries to deceive me with white lies
Which tries to discolor me with its rays of light

I am a black renegade
Determined to face the system
I drum up the black without a hitch
I bum-rush the stage

I am a black renegade
I advocate a necessary darkening
I unmask any racists in the closet
I shove my foot in the door and walk in

Translated from Portuguese by John Keene

I won’t wash the dishes anymore
Or dust the furniture
I’m sorry
I’ve begun to read
The other day I opened a book and a week later I decided
I won’t carry the trash out to the trash bin
Or clean up the mess of leaves falling in the yard
I’m sorry
After reading I noticed each dish has its own aesthetic,
an aesthetic of traces, of ethics, of static
I look at my hands as they flip the books’ pages
Hands much softer than they were before
I feel that I can start to be all the time
I feel. If something happens
I am not going to wash anymore. Nor bring
your rugs in for dry cleaning
My eyes grow teary
I’m sorry
Now that I’ve begun to read I want to understand,
why, why?
And why
things exist
I read and I read and I read
I even smiled
And left the beans to burn. . .
See, the beans always take time to cook
Let’s just say things are different now. . . .
Ah, I forgot to say
I won’t do it any more
I‘ve resolved to have some time for myself
I’ve resolved to read about what's going on between us
Don’t wait for me
Don’t call for me
I won’t be going
From everything I’ve ever read, from everything I understand
It was you who went
Went too far, for too long, past the alphabet
It had to be spelled out for you
I won’t wash things to cover up the true filth
Or dust things clean and scatter the dust from here to there and from there to here
I’ll disinfect my hands and avoid your moving parts
I won’t touch alcohol
After so many years literate
I’ve learned to read
After so much time together
I’ve learned to make a break

My sneaker from your shoe
My drawer from your ties
My perfume from your scent
My canvas from your frame
That’s how it is, I’m not washing a thing anymore
And I stare at the filth at the bottom of the glass

The moment always arrives
of shaking things up, of moving forward, of making sense of things
I do not wash dishes anymore
I read the signature on my Emancipation Proclamation in black capital letters,
size 18, double-spaced
I set myself free

I do not wash dishes anymore
I want silver platters
Deluxe kitchens
And gold jewelry
The real kind

So is the Emancipation Proclamation decreed

Translated from Portuguese by John Keene

Time
is an essence
I carry within me
Time and its strands
They've been coiled inside me since my navel was knotted
It has as its complementary counterpart
The space between time and its options
Time, lord of the hours
reigns sovereign
Subtly, on a silver cord
People don't kill time
He is the killer.

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

For Eliane, Mireille, and Regina

                                  We dreamed of a phlegmatic life for you
                             of sleep and siestas
                             sweet things, an honorable luxury
                             a carpet of rich flowers at your feet
                             to put your fears to sleep 
                                           —Malek Alloula, The Exercise of the 
                                                Senses 
 
                                  Death’s dust has disrobed you even of your 
                                       soul
                                           —Pierre Jean Jouve, Matière céleste 

A

Algeria
      whose whiteness flowed into lead
A black decade / years of blood
Rupture              Algeria, la Maison Blanche 
Austere welcome of the patriarch in his tight-fitting borrowed
suit 
who knew the rites of passage
       the institution’s stringent checks
Arrivals and departures both distressing

S

Songbirds, the innocent larks at the border of Saint-Cloud
So many memories Eliane told me
Simple choices         solid ties
Impatience to know the city’s every corner
Thirsty beneath the blinking neon 
But you always did your homework

S

Slip from the frame to shape the film
A new world opening in the red 
Salutary progression where you speak and
Give voice to peasant women joyously
Telling their stories
A thirst to speak
You burst through the screen 

I

Impatient red desire      the dazzling meeting
                               Passage Camels
Impatient to live

A
All that black: no sooner liberated
Medina’s women excluded from the procession
Disinherited 
Denial of the Messenger’s daughter 

Rue Eugène Vartan How vast the prison 

The world is not a film set 

D

Disillusion, pain, on the horizon’s eighty degrees
Disappearance of the French language 
Debacle, that will not let you rest until you
Drift where the word carries you 

J

Joyous days standing to sing the country
Algeria the Fortunate setting itself free 
Erasure of all trace
Of ancient Caesarea the smell of the sea without armor
And mute absinthe 

E

Emerald at the foot of the lions’ mountain
Oran scoffs at the chiaroscuro of a gaze
To each his own shamelessness 
Another Rimitti makes amends
The minotaur basks in the sun on the Cintra’s terrace 

B

Brawling and fantasia keep a memory alive
You transcribe its austere narrative
From rags of the massacre
Weave the story’s brightness 

A

Abdelkader roars on the Place d’Armes 
The theater is open 
White with all those dead calling us to order
The kingdom of shadows has no taste 

R

Rest     you too
Return in peace, O soul 
The father’s house is a living language
Open to guests passing through 

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker


This particular Tartar doesn’t have four dromedaries for traveling
That’s what he usually says                              Not without a touch of irony
—it’s annoying to repeat yourself
Justify your immobility
Give all sorts of explanations
No one asks for them 
Isn’t it the survival of some sort of atavism?
 
Nomadism is an art           a camel is indispensable
 
**

The Tartars know something about it 
What they recount was classed as a world heritage
But they’re not the only ones to have
Made use of a scholarly poetry on the question 
 
And oases for thirst as the saying goes
Property of the picturesque nomad
The affirmation is categorical 
 
Scathing cutting all discussion short 

**

This particular Tartar doesn’t leave                                 that is to say never leaves
                                   the enclosure of the Kremlin
High walls pulled down now since June
Trenches filled in gigantic peripheral highways
Places for not-so-weekly markets
 
Not very talented                                 maybe a mask
Strategy of representation
Poison of urban phantasmagoria 
A character wrung out like a dishrag
 
It’s not amusing
Not dramatic either 
 
He daydreams in his garret of unveiling the mysteries of magnificent cities
 
Illumination
 
**

The briefest departure                                  as soon as it’s imagined
Which is rare                                               turns out to be a Chinese puzzle
He’s got to think about it at length             very lengthily indeed
To mope    to dissect  to gnaw away at it    to howl at the crows
In order to rouse himself
 
How do you decide to leave?
 
It’s complicated                                         it requires loads of energy
Contrary to preconceived ideas
Or received ones
 
That cast shadows on the wall behind the dump
 
**

He’s constantly preparing detailed itineraries
Drawn down to the millimeter
With a Prussian staff officer’s precision 
For minutiae he has                           a compass in his eye
Despite his genetic stain
 
He works on it nonstop                   for weeks
 
Suddenly just like that presto subito
Realizes that he doesn’t have the means to do this or
Another extravagant destination occurs to him
And then                            what good is it all?
Finished!  Trashcan!
 
What a pity
 
**

Going down the road to bargain-hunt at the Villejuif fleamarket or have a look
At the Canon at Gobelins that’s an expedition
Adventure!
A real one              there where they shiver in bomb-craters
 
The famous voyages of Sindbad the Sailor on the Indian Ocean or the Coral Sea, that he devours greedily in the Galland translation (especially the prints that he acquired under the counter) are no great thing. Ordinary Sunday strolls, rubbish, compared to the slightest displacement he’s obliged to make out of his village.

That’s something serious!
 
Like hearing the moans at dawn
                                             fifty leagues off, of Behemoths in heat 
Nothing to do with meaningless roadside rustlings 
 
**

It’s not that he’s cowardly like those Uighurs of the second
Or even the third generation and after
Those arrogant bastards don’t ever dare decamp from their seedy ghetto
Where they terrorize old ladies on the staircase landing!
Troublesome delinquents! Drug dealers!
Part-time swindlers and pyromaniacs!
 
And you, mate, you don’t like the Uighurs much
 
No one can stand the Uighurs!
It’s an open wound 
 
**

Not a loafer like those Merovingian kings
Who, the new schoolbooks affirm,
Would travel sluggishly supine in ox-carts
 
Ambulant jellies obstructing the roadways 
The palace mayors                                      fortunately they were around 
Put up with the job 
 
No, certainly not 
 
He wasn’t indecisive either
Don’t trust appearances 
 
**

The Tartars obstinate enterprising people
Who don’t give in easily 
Calloused hands agile minds in an era where
Ploughs / feathers don’t mean a thing
Defying maledictions all day long and daily
Demoralized and downcast for ages
 
Accursed crow so white and beautiful O God
Turned swarthy for having disobeyed deliberately or
Just mistaken a bag of lice for a bag of gold 
 
A regrettable incident            it only happens to people like us
Or we would have ended up like this
But we ended up like this
 
In the same satchel as the Uighurs
 
**

But none of this concerns him
 
His almost-official lodging on the outskirts of Bicêtre
A small government flat as he’s a veteran
Taught him 
While forgetting proverbs the steel of the tribe
To temper his nomad ancestry
 
To park his suitcases on the parquet
 
A dream the soldier cherishes while marching
Easier to say than to do           but it’s done
 
An unchanging existence doesn’t kill you really
You taste things differently diminishing            like soap
 
**

To draw a line through his past
                                                    —he’d like to write
his memoirs
                                                    One foot in the grave
 
The hope of a conversation with himself
Getting rid of his illusions 
Finding the words to say who he is
 
It brings a kind of lightness
 
No moodiness       or extravagance
 
He’d been able to attempt the impossible                  Win that great victory 

**

Into the closet with his bellicose instincts his morbid frenzy his unsatisfied sexual appetites his trashy primitive nostalgia to peacefully cultivate a sparse rocky patch of land 

(above all prefers pampering a tomato plant he brought back from Toulon with lettuces sorrel and wild thyme)
 
won without cheating 
memorable Tarot reading
they still talk about it today
profusion of savory details
witticisms you had to admire
that card game at the Café de la Mairie
 
**

This particular Tartar is unbeatable at cards
Except for whist (not a game for Tartars)
Which permits him to make ends meet
Sometimes throw a party, a feast
Where all the neighborhood enjoys his largesse
 
Well-planned banquets, a sophisticated mise en scène
Remembered for a certain decorum
 
Generosity in the blood secular recommendations
What he says so as not to be labeled a brainless spender
And maybe he believes it
Everyone’s there to receive the manna
Celebrate the donor
Shouting his slogan: I sow gold . . . 
 
We’re not likely to see such days again soon 
 
**

There’s always a glistening pigeon            favorable circumstances 
Newly arrived in the neighborhood
                                                         the bird
lets himself be plucked
without a fuss                                  Satisfied, even
 
The game takes place according to the rules
A good-natured politeness
Nothing to be said                           No regrets
no unseemly protests 
 
Everyone sympathizes  /  calm  /  the sucker
holds the spittoon while they tot up the score
 
In such a situation you can lose with style
Not lose face