The Roads of the South
Don't forget to say
the names of God
if you go down the roads of the South.
On the planes of Tiris
the dust is having a blast
after the blessings.
A toast breaks the nostalgic song
from the Valley of Sadness
to the Heart of the Scorpions.
When the moon bundles up
old lady night is left alone
in the silhouette of a hearth.
A ship of burning ash
inebriated with anxiety
is drinking dirt in the bay.
Among the travelers
she is there nude,
with her shiny black hair
that reaches her thighs.
Handcuffed by bandages & henna
she walks among the ageless stones
through regions that have no lakes.
Between kisses & rainstorms,
between hugs & promises,
something smells like contraband.
Don't forget to say
the names of God
if you go down the roads of the South.
Boughs of Thirst
In the shade of a thorn tree
two bodies shudder
before their nakedness
while half a desert
separates them & their ma al-ayún.
In the Bay of Santiago
someone beat a drum & crooned
an entrancing primitive chant
in Hassaniya or Amharic
in Mandinka or Castilian.
A letter in Catalan arrived
from the Font de Canaletas,
with map & all,
announcing that stray, still
unbranded camel
would make a good water trough.
Existence
We exist
as the unalterable identity
of this life in itself.
We exist
by translating the hieroglyphs
of eternal hardship.
We exist
among collapsing wells
without the miracle of grass.
We exist
with empirical proof & calendars.
from Los versos de la madera
Limam Boicha
translated from the Spanish by Joseph Mulligan
Reprinted, with permission, from Poems for the Millennium, Volume Four: The University of California Book of North African Literature, edited by Pierre Joris and Habib Tengour (University of California Press, 2013).
As the final Spanish military forces left Western Sahara in 1976 before a referendum could be held by which the old colony could have gained international recognition as an autonomous state, Morocco and Mauritania, eager to expand their borders, both sent armies into that vast territory populated by 100,000 Sahrawis. While the UN opposed the occupation, it did nothing to stop it, and the Sahrawi-led front, POLISARIO, could not thwart the aggressors. In little time, thousands of Sahrawis died or disappeared, and most of the survivors were forced into the refugee camps of Tindouf, Algeria.
By 1982, POLISARIO had managed to push back Mauritanian troops and corner the Moroccans, who retaliated by constructing gigantic walls to divide the desert in two. By 2009, approximately 2,700 km of walls towered in Western Sahara, guarded by 130,000 Moroccan soldiers. Currently, about two thirds of the Sahara is under Moroccan control and one third, Sahrawi. During the 70s and 80s, Sahrawis were dispersed across the region, away from El Aaiún, from Tiris, from Amiskarif; toponyms that quickly became emblems of a confiscated past.
Limam Boicha is part of the Generación de la Amistad saharaui, a group formed in 2005 that has lived its entire life in this political stalemate. Like many Sahrawis, in the 80s Boicha crossed the Atlantic and was educated in Cuba, where he was influenced by the Latin American tradition of José Martí, Mario Benedetti, and Pablo Neruda, which he fused with the Spanish tradition of Lorca and the Generation of '27. The stakes of Boicha's poetry are too high for literary frivolity, which is why, rather than blindly adopting the aesthetics of his Hispanic brethren, he breaths autonomy through his poetics which, filled with pathos, gravitates toward a gritty realism of inconvenient truths.
Boicha's monographs are Los versos de la madera (Puentepalo, 2004) and Ritos de jaima (Bubisher, 2012).
By 1982, POLISARIO had managed to push back Mauritanian troops and corner the Moroccans, who retaliated by constructing gigantic walls to divide the desert in two. By 2009, approximately 2,700 km of walls towered in Western Sahara, guarded by 130,000 Moroccan soldiers. Currently, about two thirds of the Sahara is under Moroccan control and one third, Sahrawi. During the 70s and 80s, Sahrawis were dispersed across the region, away from El Aaiún, from Tiris, from Amiskarif; toponyms that quickly became emblems of a confiscated past.
Limam Boicha is part of the Generación de la Amistad saharaui, a group formed in 2005 that has lived its entire life in this political stalemate. Like many Sahrawis, in the 80s Boicha crossed the Atlantic and was educated in Cuba, where he was influenced by the Latin American tradition of José Martí, Mario Benedetti, and Pablo Neruda, which he fused with the Spanish tradition of Lorca and the Generation of '27. The stakes of Boicha's poetry are too high for literary frivolity, which is why, rather than blindly adopting the aesthetics of his Hispanic brethren, he breaths autonomy through his poetics which, filled with pathos, gravitates toward a gritty realism of inconvenient truths.
Boicha's monographs are Los versos de la madera (Puentepalo, 2004) and Ritos de jaima (Bubisher, 2012).
Limam Boicha was born in the Western Sahara in 1973. In 1982 he arrived in Cuba, a land he would come to embrace. He went on to study journalism before returning to the refugee camps of Tindouf, where he collaborated on Sahrawi National Radio. He is a member of the Generación de la Amistad saharaui, and his poems have appeared in the anthologies Añoranza (2003) and Bubisher (2003). He has also published a collection of his own, Los versos de la madera (2004). He lives in Barcelona.
Joseph Mulligan was born in Batavia, NY. In 2011, Roof Books published his translation Against Professional Secrets by César Vallejo. In 2014, Grove/Atlantic will publish his translation The Antiquarian by Gustavo Faverón Patriau. He has recently completed: Mawqif: poemas y ensayos de Pierre Joris, co-translated with Mario Domínguez Parra, and, as editor and principle translator, The Selected Writings of César Vallejo.
