Poetry

Happy is Inezgane!

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

Comments are closed.