AMINA SAÏDI’ve decorated the day with the tattoos of my dreams
my face has seen my other face
I’ve not heard the voice calling me
the hand seeking me hasn’t found me
I’ve been born several times from each star
I’ve died as often from the sun of days
I’ve taken early boats to nowhere
I’ve asked for a room in another’s homeland
I’d accomplished nothing before our farewells
I’ve lived in the sunset the sunrise and the space of winds
I was this stranger accompanied by the evening
twice a stranger between north and south
I’ve engraved sad birds on gray stones
I’ve drawn these stones and lived in them
I’ve constructed rafts where there were no oceans
I’ve raised tents where there were no deserts
caravans have led me toward an eastern dream
my calligraphies have traveled on the back of clouds
I remembered the snow of almond trees
I’ve followed the airy path of birds
up to the lunar mount at the eiderdowns of births
I’ve learned and forgotten all the languages of earth
I’ve made a great fire of all homelands
I’ve drunk on some evenings at the flask of forgetting
I’ve sought my star in the bed of stars
I’ve kept your love in the hollow of my palm
I’ve woven a carpet with the wool of memory
I’ve unfolded the world under the arch of beginnings
I’ve bandaged the twilight’s wounds
I’ve put my seasons in sheaves to o√er them to life
I’ve counted the trees separating you from me
we were two on this earth we there alone
I have tightened a word belt around my waist
covered with a winding sheet the illusion of mirrors
cultivated silence like a rare plant
gleam after gleam I have deciphered the night
death has courted me for a time
...
I took my first steps in the river loam
they buried me living under a heap of sand
they closed o√ the cave—that my sleep makes eternal