The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

HABIB TENGOUR

it seemed a great distance
to the brink of the canal
unreckoned and put to no use
—keith waldrop

Habib Tengour 1947–

mostaganem, algeria

T

engour is one of the foremost contemporary Maghrebian poets. His

work focuses on the postcolonial and nomadic condition of his people.

Tengour’s father was a militant nationalist, and when Tengour was five,

the family moved to France to escape persecution by the police. After studying

sociology and anthropology, Tengour returned to Algeria to complete his na-

tional service. His writing concerns issues of identity and the invention of a

narrative structure beyond traditional French lyric form. Principal works: Tapa-

paktaques, la poésie-île, 1976; La Nacre à l’âme, 1981; Schistes et Tahmad II, 1983;

Sultan Galiev, ou la rupture de stocks, 1985; L’Épreuve de l’Arc, 1990.

Secret in Broad Daylight

‘‘... Always slower, and your gestures caught little by little in the glue of a strange torpor,

finally unmoving, so lost that my voice can’t reach you any longer... ’’

—Gustave Roud

STATE I

BLACK, such a soul in exile slowly makes its way towards
death. Here’s winter. The body of the beggars twists at
a subway opening. It’s not this cold that I fear or the stomach’s hunger
although a beggar at your threshold, my limbs blue.
It was already my story to live to love you to lose myself
in the dark of my belt.