Abdallah Zrika Poem

Abdallah Zrika

MICE OF THE WHEEL OF LONELINESS

1.

I don’t want to be the chair
facing the body of the deceased

nor the insect of emptiness
between the legs of the words

nor the pebble of the eye that breaks
the surface of the glass

not even the red
that hasn’t seen the least drop of blood to lick

2.

I do not understand the shape of the millstone
when the wind throws me down

nor the rain
that runs away
through the holes in my shoes

I don’t know where I am

when I see an earth

marked off by the pillars of my death
And I don’t understand the sky

when the rain falls

at the bottom of my head

in the place of the pail

that slightly shakes my bed

3.

I understand fever when it grabs me
scrambling everything I hear

wiping away everything I see

in the very sweat that drains from me

until I wake up
and open the world the way one opens an icebox
finding nothing

except the smell

of white

rotten because of the ice

Casablanca, 2000

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