So many people die each day that our hearts refuse to register grief. All these dead Who among us will question them Will it still require a massacre and tears for the road beneath the earth to be traced for us Unless this wind that rips into us has made us lose our reason to the point that we don’t care about the meeting All these dead What names should be called in the circle hands extended for a prayer of parting but reluctantly We don’t wail the way we used to So many people die each day that our hearts refuse to register grief All these dead whom we never see Was it part of their destiny to die All these dead who slowly slip out of our lives What have we offered them in all this time if not words too unraveled to give birth to one poem ................................................................................. Poem: Habib Tengour - In the Country of the Dead - 2007 Artwork: Pieter Bruegel - The Triumph of Death - 1562 Habib Tengour is an Algerian writer, poet and anthropologist born in Mostaganam in 1947. He came to France in 1958 with his father, an Arabic teacher and militant nationalist who left Algeria to escape persecution from the police. Growing up in the political turmoil of the Algerian War, emigration, and the French Left, he has constantly lived between France and Algeria. Tengour is considered one of the foremost contemporary Maghrebian poets.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 10:28:21 +0000
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