Amina Saïd was born in Tunisia in 1953, and now lives in Paris. She is the author of twelve collections of poetry, most recently L’Absence l’inachevé., published in 2009 by Les Editions de la différence. She has also published two books of tales and fables from Tunisia, and several translations of novels by the Filipino writer F. Sionil José.
you have doubts about the patience
of this lion-colored earth
when its eyes absent themselves
to open on the blue
which colors its sense
like you like the poem
this earth is born
of the look that dreamed it
life is a crossing
between two shores
analogy of margins
slow movement toward the unfinished
song of innocence and memory
scribe in the night of language
when night speaks the language of noughts
you are on this earth
to grow your soul
tame what’s human
in dread
inhabit the word’s word
and keep the poem’s promise
Amina Saïd
© Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
I was born of a silence
between the sea and the olive-tree
the mystery of an errant star
protects me from myself
I was born of a silence
between the sea and the olive-tree
of the rhythm of waves
and the childhood of light
words have a visible face
which hides another one
at the crossroads of the poem
some of them resist
expose me to the danger of speech
I was born of a silence
between the sea and the olive-tree
of the rhythm of waves
and the childhood of light
of July’s wedding of a summer moon
of an obvious fact and of a question
hanging from the world’s breath
I take my place in a sorrowful
wandering the place where I live
is always a border
I was born of a silence
between the sea and the olive-tree
of the rhythm of waves
and the childhood of light
of July’s wedding of a summer moon
of an obvious fact and of a question
of a swallow’s solitary flight
and of a fickle star
last meeting-place with yourself
death crater fiery mouth
where you leave your last pair of sandals
our path starts from the sun
to return to the sun
Amina Saïd
© Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
on the seventh day of my birth
I spoke the language
of the world I’d come from
bore witness to a shadow
which was the shadow
of another light
which no one saw
in the seventh month of my birth
my mouth took the shape of the void
I cried to tell what was true
and that which the present had taught me
of the past of the future
but no one understood
the seventh year of my birth
I dreamed what had been
on the world’s lined page
I traced letter after letter
to remind myself
of what I had to forget
and of what in me was already dying
Amina Saïd
© Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
I was ten years old head full of sky
I borrowed the sun’s wings
to fly toward that spot between two shores
I built towers of sand
where that shadow lived which served as my body
body ripened by a sun of extreme summer
I was in the wind’s thoughts
intonations of light
composed my landscape
in the color of day
I scowled with the stones
where scorpions sheltered
on the island, women went masked
perhaps out of modesty
sky in my head I would make myself invisible
to see better knocked at windowpanes
where the day gathered
in an ordinary hymn
I looked for meaning in form—
somewhere out there the world had to exist
I was twenty years old impatient
to shore up at new continents
I left my father’s house
gave my avian liberty up to the light
entered the space of darkness
I tried to open invisible doors
claimed to read the very stuff of silence
like a mother tongue
made a beginning of the past
and a double absence of the present
body more alive than dead
I refused to let night separate me
from day or day from night
watcher of dreams whom a dream invented
what was I looking for when I opened my eyes
on the colors of the world
which the sun never lets out of its sight
from words’ second memory
real feeling is born
I inhabit that music
which I can’t be the only one to hear
shadow which follows or precedes its shadow
on the border between dream and real
I stay on my own margins
in space and time
how to know if in this nowhere
place where a voice sets itself free
I came of my own free will
or if it was imposed on me
Amina Saïd
© Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
Published with the permission of Amina Saïd & Marilyn Hacker