Siham Bouhlal was born in Casablanca, Morocco. She has a PhD in literature from the University Paris-Sorbonne, and translates to French medieval Arabic texts (Le livre de brocart ou la société raffinée de Bagdad au IXe siècle, Gallimard, 2004 ; L’art du commensal ou boire dans la culture Arabe, Actes Sud, 2009). She has three collections of her own poems (Poèmes bleus, Tarabuste, 2005 ; Songes d’une nuit Berbère ou la tombe d’épines, Al Manar, Paris, 2007 ; Corps Lumière, Al Manar, 2008) ; Le sel de l’amour, a beautiful book with paintings of Julius Baltazar, Al Manar, Paris, 2009
Siham Bouhlal lives in Paris since 1984 and writes in French.
Please visit Banipal “an independent literary magazine publishing contemporary authors and poets from all over the Arab world in English translation” where the poems below also have been published.
Woman inhabiting this body
Show yourself to my beloved
Let your reflection shine in his eyes
Let his breath become your perfume
Let his caressings describe your forms
He alone possesses your secret
I am the earth he treads
The breez he breaths
My love is a garden
Extending infinitely
Divine carpet woven
To the rythm of his footfalls
My heart performs its dance
His breathing caresses my hair
Heavy with henna and honey
Siham Bouhlal
© translation from French by James Kirkup
Why do you keep casting away your soul?
And my soul following it
Keeps running tirelessly
To collect the fragments
Where you have scattered them
I never loses sight of you
It tremles for you
Recomposing each fragment
Of your mirror in its own place
Whenever it breaks
My face is decomposed
And no longer resembles anything
Its features lost
In your shattered looking-glass
Siham Bouhlal
© translation from French by James Kirkup
Earth open your belly
Mother of all men
Open your belly to me
Deep within your breast
I must bury my passion
No ceremonials funeral procession
Deep within you
Desire for my beloved
Enters the pit
Dug with my own hands
And day after day
I shall come to water the earth
Where flowers
Shall keep breathing forth
The scent of my beloved
Siham Bouhlal
© translation from French by James Kirkup
Reason?
Nothing is white
Nothing black
My dwelling is within you
I seek neither Praradise
Nor a winged Pegasus
My head on your heart
Is cured of its faintings
My erring feet
Find their path again
At your feet my body
Longs to lay itself
And my lips
Embrace the traces
Of your footsteps
Tell me where
Does reason lie?
Siham Bouhlal
© translation from French by James Kirkup
What gentle words
What promises of love
Eternal?
My friend
What cruelties
What falsehoods
Have dried up your heart?
What mad destiny
Trifles with my love?
Venus burts out laughing
Whenever my tears wound
My eyelids
When my famished heart
Casts itself down
She pours its waters
Upon the white sands
What crime is it
I am being punished for?
Siham Bouhlal
© translation from French by James Kirkup
Bold cavalier
Why do you ride there
All alone?
My soul is caught
By the harness on your steed
When you tear through
The night and the day
And see all things
Bowing before your passage
In the heavens and on earth
The moon and the stars
The sun and the clouds
Envy my soul so close to you
But do not know
That even so close
My beloved has laid
A thousand and one deserts
Between him and me
And that he has rent
With his powerful hands
The sea;s of my cloak
That once used to be enfolded
Round our impassioned bodies
Siham Bouhlal
© translation from French by James Kirkup
Where can I run to
He towards whom
My footsteps hasten
Leaves me and goes
And Time in its demented course
Rends us apart
Unties what was barely tied
In anguish and in torment
Siham Bouhlal
© translation from French by James Kirkup
Of love
I know no more
Then exile
Kisses caresses
Vanished
In my memory
My solitude
In its anguish
Contemplates
That dream
Siham Bouhlal
© translation from French by James Kirkup
Published with the permission of Siham Bouhlal