The Redness of the Sun’s Trousers
Abdallah Zriqa
1
Oh, how can I see ?
While my eye is circumcised
Is this dirt?
Or stone for ablutions
What is this path extending from harem to heaven?
And this woman who has found nothing else but the back of a servant to peek out of a window
And behold a coffin,
these wasted taps coming from a rusty throat
The astrologers who couldn’t see this sky because prevented by flies
Nor the labyrinths that lead to a dog bite
But I didn’t know that between the East and the West
There was a veil
And a rosary of sins
2
How can your hand not turn into a whore?
while you paint every day
And what would it be like, when the canvas turns into a field
And your eye into a raven
And what would ” Monet”, “Renoir” and “Pissarro” have done
Had they not gone plein air
But then, what is the color of madness, if not yellow
What is the value of a line if it is not a blade?
have you seen this face that resembles a crumb of bread?
women looking like potatoes
And the sun unsuitable for any morning
What would Matisse have done had he not blown his wind
on red pants
What good would this collapsed chair be if it weren’t waiting for
Van Gogh to emerge from the void of a hospital
3
Or Ingres
Why does the body start from the back?
Or Degas
Who is dancing?
Is it life or this emptiness?
Or Michelangelo.
What a Renaissance if not that of the body
Was it even possible to discover America before discovering the folds
of the body
I forgot how I got into that worn out bar
Where Manet was with his tight, oil-stained pants
Bonnard there helping a woman take off her shirt
And Matisse there painting a leg with the blue of his eyes
And I didn’t see anyone else there
At the door I saw Modigliani trying to ride
the bicycle of a woman who inadvertently bowed down.
Translated into English by Pina Piccolo based on the Italian translation from the original Arabic by Sana Darghmouni.
Abdallah Zrika, contemporary Moroccan poet born in Casablanca in 1953. He writes in free style and uses colloquial language in his poems . His defense of freedom of expression cost him two years in prison in the ‘Years of Lead’ in Morocco. in addition to poetry, he also writes novels and plays for the theater. Most of his works are translated into French (La solitude des abattoirs du blanc, La colombe du texte) and some in English (Poems from The Insect of Infinity, translated by Tim DeMay).
