Poem By Mohamed Ellaghafi (With Biography)

Mohamed Ellaghafi a Moroccan poet, writer, and publisher, was born on December 7, 1960, in Casablanca. He is the founder and current president of the University of Moroccan Creators and the founder of the National Poetry Award in Morocco. He has published more than fifteen books, ranging from poetry to short stories, and has participated in significant national and Arab poetry gatherings. He is considered one of the pioneers of modern poetry in Morocco, with his beginnings tracing back to the early 1980s as the founder of the (Five Senses) poetic movement, an artistic movement that emerged to align with the course of modernity.

Currently, he publishes in the Qatari magazine Doha, the London-based newspaper Al-Zaman, and the Egyptian magazine Al-Ahram. He was also honored by the Moroccan Ministry of Culture in 2019, in Beirut and Cairo in 2014, and by several prestigious associations both nationally and internationally.

His works have been translated into several languages, including English, French, Persian, German, and Italian.

This poem eats from my flesh

while you drink my blood,

O breaths steeped

in sorrow.

I will not blame the sun for setting,

I will not turn my neck backwards

as I count the minutes of my life.

No one will believe me if I say

there’s a great terror in my head

and a hell in my chest.

No one will believe me,

not the courier of love

nor the beloved lamented in my papers.

This poem eats from my flesh

while I tear down the continent of my heart

searching for a title

for a new draft.

This poem eats from my flesh,

my black blood boils between your lips

and upon the roadside of your breasts

the pain of the day sighs.

This poem eats from my flesh,

and the earth, and the beloved,

and the clouds that rain from my eyes.

Between you and me, a thousand breezes and a faint whisper,

and this noise obscures the meanings.

I almost buried what was left of the remnants of my bones

if not for the poem’s return to its senses.

I passed through here contemplating the shores,

smiling at all this emptiness

that contains nothing but your shadow.

I see in the froth of the waves

the whiteness of your heart, O sea.

This poem eats from my flesh

while you drink my black blood.

Nothing remains of this thin body

but bones floating on the surface

of my flowing tears.

This poem eats from my flesh

while you drink my black blood

by the shore,

the sky is open and the sea stretches out,

slaughtering me from vein to vein.

I wish I were dust,

and you were sifting me with the salt of your heart.

This poem eats from my flesh

while you drink my blood,

so what remains at a distance from the eye

is a mirage and questions for the wind

that didn’t bring your messages.

This poem eats from my flesh

while you drink my blood.

Has the evening not come yet

for us to smile together on the surface of the water

and wait for the wind to merge our faces

and for us to fade away slowly

like the clouds at noon?

I am skilled at singing like a caged bird,

and also skilled at standing on one leg

like a sad heron.

Sad,

both I and the sea,

each of us battling,

its waves visible,

and my waves internal.