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Two Poems by Djibril Sall

by Pierre Joris · July 11, 2011

Finally have internet in the mountains of the Pyrenees (the village of Bourg d’Oueil, to be precise) & can try to get back to some normalcy of blogging. Working right now — as I’ve been doing for some two years now! — on the Maghrib anthology. Here are two poems by the Mauritanian poet Djibril Sall (born in the town of Rosso in 1939), translated from Sall’s French this morning.

HAIRE M’BAR

Furrow of fertile earth
Attack of balanitis thorn on fire tongue;
Innocent child’s hand on an millet ear
In morning’s neckline;
Blue sky
Setting sun to the sound of DOUGA

Yesterday it was CAS-CAS in dirt and blood
SIMBARADJI is dust and sweat
Today HAIRE M’BAR in honor and pride

Let my pen
gather the pollen
from SPIRIT’S flower:
Free is my heart
Free my thought,
Oh the celestial palette!
rime fetters me
the quatrain torments me
the caesura sections me
the alexandrian fences me in:

JAIL!

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Tags: Djibril Sall

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Deborah Zike says:

July 11, 2011 at 8:29 am

I really liked the poems and hope to read more.

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Pēteris Cedriņš says:

July 13, 2011 at 6:38 am

Beautiful. Is there any chance you could also post the French? (I ask because I’d like to share the poems with a non-anglophonic francophone…).

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July Blalack says:

August 3, 2019 at 9:41 am

Dear Pierre,
Thank you so much for posting these translations from Mauritania, a literary goldmine which is sadly neglected by the outside world. I am curating a special issue of Words Without Borders focusing on Mauritania, and am looking for French-English translators if you or anyone you know might be interested.

Best wishes,
July

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Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946, was raised in Luxembourg. Since age 18, he has moved between Europe, the Maghreb & the US & holds both Luxembourg & American citizenship. He has published over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021) & Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press. In 2020 his two final Paul Celan translations came out: Microliths They Are, Little Stones (Posthumous prose, from CMP) & The Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG). Forthcoming are: Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” (Small Orange Import, 2023) & Diwan of Exiles: A Pierre Joris Reader (edited with Ariel Reznikoff, 2024). For a full list see the right column on this blog.

In 2011 Litteraria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, published Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays on Joris’ work by, among others, Mohammed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Robert Kelly, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Jean Portante, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff & Nicole Peyrafitte (2011).

Other work includes the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; Mitch Elrod, guitar; Ta’wil Productions). With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, and with Habib. Tengour Poems for the Millennium, vol. 3: The University of California Book of North African Literature.

When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte. A volume of their collaborative work, to be called Domopoetics, will be published in the near future.