Fatéma Chahid: Escape

Who am I and who are you
In the realm of great coronations you came to me the unknown
Chance was playing dice at street corners
For me for you for another man another woman
In those great solitudes which gnaw at stones
Lazare  Opera  d’Antin  Madeleine
Foreign shores exile orchards
Somber traps for landless rivers
Eldorado for lost stars
In the white labyrinths of uncertain love

Was I a stump or a crater
An erring flower in quest of mystery
An unrepentant robber of dreams
A shadow of burning suffering
I walked
A naked heart in a winter escape
My belly uncovered seeking refuge
In some otherness where I could be a humble queen

I had lost my twenties   my thirties
A happy heart in feast
A way of flesh and a heaven for the head
Time in me deceiving time
In the agony of the highest desire
In a fake death of fable and raving

And you came to me the unknown
When I was expecting you without anchorage
I bearing light and you seeking chimeras
And you could not know my beautiful mirror
That it only takes a smile, a look
For the burning flame of great nights
To come back to life from the dead fire

Oh the sweetness of flowers in memory of caresses
And the fiery lava flowing
Slowly from your eyes
Slowly into my veins
A visage in the crowd
Among so many others multiplied by our looks
You who could have been another
And who cancels green wood memories
In my burned out autumn

translated from the French by Hafsa Bekri-Lamrani