Gedicht
Abdel-ilah Salhi
Love front
What we learnt of love was from novels, stories, and poems. With poverty, frustration, and
narrow horizons we began to fall in love at dreadful ease, and suffer much more easily.
Despite that we clung to that love which has no life and existence outside books.
Defeats in love destroyed many of us, dispersed a lot into vagabondage, and caused many
others to disappear. Despite that, from time to time some warrior appears; a young man in
most cases, waving a tattered flag, mocking the crushing weight of reality, and its bloody
grinding mill. He seems sure that his anguish is more valuable than the Mercedes cars which
besiege his poor girlfriend, and that true feelings are a mortal weapon which it suffices to
draw for the battle to be settled.
We are the disabled victims of this war, feeling for our scars, meanwhile drinking cheap wine
with anonymous prostitutes in dark pubs, and pitying every young man who surges from the
suburbs of towns riding a gifted poem, and entering the front defenceless.
© Translation: 2004, Norddine Zouitni
LOVE FRONT
© 2004, Abdel-ilah Salhi
Publisher: First published on PIW,
Publisher: First published on PIW,
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LOVE FRONT
Love front
What we learnt of love was from novels, stories, and poems. With poverty, frustration, and
narrow horizons we began to fall in love at dreadful ease, and suffer much more easily.
Despite that we clung to that love which has no life and existence outside books.
Defeats in love destroyed many of us, dispersed a lot into vagabondage, and caused many
others to disappear. Despite that, from time to time some warrior appears; a young man in
most cases, waving a tattered flag, mocking the crushing weight of reality, and its bloody
grinding mill. He seems sure that his anguish is more valuable than the Mercedes cars which
besiege his poor girlfriend, and that true feelings are a mortal weapon which it suffices to
draw for the battle to be settled.
We are the disabled victims of this war, feeling for our scars, meanwhile drinking cheap wine
with anonymous prostitutes in dark pubs, and pitying every young man who surges from the
suburbs of towns riding a gifted poem, and entering the front defenceless.
© 2004, Norddine Zouitni
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