Happy is Inezgane! I could be content
To transact all the commerce of my life in no other place than here;
To eat with hearty appetite and never care
For the price, for people who circle my low table to share my tagine.
Yet I do sometimes feel a faint languishment
For German order, for British punctuality, for French fastidiousness
And a whisper of desire to run alone
Through a leafy forest, happy as an antelope,
Half forget for that moment what crowd or pride or misguide meant.
Happy is Inezgane, loud her dirty echoing alleys
Enough the daily nagging of her beggars to feed my charity
Enough the prison and the madhouse to be her only ecstasies
Yet I do often burn to see:
Art smoldering her sunset skies, music move her merchants to swirling dance.
And I, without the need of currency, proudly flowing down her streets.
Mohamed Mahou
Inezgane, Morocco