Los caminos del Sur
No olvides decir
los nombres de Dios
si vas por los caminos del Sur.
En las llanuras de Tiris
el polvo está de fiesta
después de las bendiciones.
Un brindis rompe la nostálgica canción
desde el Valle de la Tristeza
hasta el Corazón de los Escorpiones.
Cuando la luna se abriga
la anciana noche se asila
en la silueta de una hoguera.
Una nave de ardiente ceniza
embriagada de ansiedad
toma tierra en la bahía.
Entre los pasajeros
está ella desnuda,
con su pelo negro, liso,
que al muslo le llega.
Anda esposada de vendas y henna
entre las piedras sin edad
y las regiones sin lagos.
Entre besos y tempestades,
entre abrazos y promesas,
hay olor a contrabando.
No olvides decir
los nombres de Dios
si vas por los caminos del Sur.
Ramas de sed
Bajo la sombra de una acacia espinosa
dos cuerpos juntos tartamudean
ante su desnudez,
mientras medio desierto
los separa de ma al-ayún.
En la Bahía de Santiago
alguien golpeó un tambor
y gritó mágicas palabras primitivas
en hasanía o amárico
en mandinga o castellano.
Desde la fuente de Canaletas
llegó una misiva en catalán,
con mapa y todo,
anunciando que ese camello perdido
sin letra ni fuego
puede ser un tonel de agua.
Existencia
Existimos
por la inalterable identidad
de esta vida propia.
Existimos
traduciendo el jeroglífico
de las eternas inclemencias.
Existimos
entre el derrumbe de los pozos
y sin el milagro del pasto.
Existimos
con empírica constancia y calendario.
de Los versos de la madera
Limam Boicha
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.
