Poetry Excerpts from Bindle of Exile by Souad Labbize
Translated from French by Susanna Lang
7
Don’t count on
my small balcony
in this humid weather
the week’s wash
dries slowly
there’s no room
for another sheet
even tricolor
I don’t know what soap
could do the job
washing old flags
is work for washerwomen
widows of unknown soldiers
the ones I know
died of heartbreak
over a washboard
8
In the apartment lobby
a mailbox
with a note
Address unknown
9
The rich
park their childhood dreams
in nice clean garages
to protect them
from oxidation
my childhood dreams
sleep outside
on asphalt that sniffs
at the soles of strangers
my dreams are not afraid
of the rust that covers their bones
like a sailor’s weathered skin
my childhood dreams grew up
on streets crowded
with wandering fantasies
living on almost nothing
when I miss them
I know where to find them
10
I ask the Sahara
what it is waiting for
the desert answers
with a knowing air
I was stolen
from the cosmic hourglass
11
If it’s tails
exile
heads
native soil
walk
with both feet
on the coin’s curved edge
striated horizon
between here
and over there
12
Where Heaven
only sees
half of me
two alphabets weave
a temporary shelter
that’s not like
paradise
not like hell
the problem with alphabets
is mathematical
closed sets
that turn in circles
waiting for the neighbors’
invitation to a joust
or a potluck supper
About the author and translator:
Souad Labbize was born in Algeria in 1965, and lived in Germany and Tunisia before moving to Toulouse, France. She has published a novel, J’aurais voulu être un escargot (I Would Have Liked to be a Snail, Seguier, 2011) and several poetry collections, including Brouillons amoureux (Drafts of Love, Éditions des Lisières, 2017) and more recently Je franchis les barbelés. (Climbing Over Barbed Wire, Éditions Bruno Doucey, 2019). The Centre Méditerranéen de Littérature honored this last publication with the 2020 Prix de la Méditerranée de la Poésie. In 2021, she released Glisser nue sur la rampe du temps (Envers) and Enfiler la chemise de l’aïeule (HETRAIE). Very committed to the cause of equality between genders, she writes in the name of all women who choose exile in order to affirm their independence.
Susanna Lang’s translations of poetry by Yves Bonnefoy include Words in Stone (University of Massachusetts Press, 1976) and Baalbek by Nohad Salameh (forthcoming from L’Atelier du Grand Tétras in fall 2021). Her translations of these and other French poets are published or forthcoming in Delos, New Poetry in Translation, The Literary Review, Transference, Another Chicago Magazine, Ezra, and OOMPH! Journal. Her third full-length collection of original poems, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was published by Terrapin Books in 2017. Among Other Stones: Conversations with Yves Bonnefoy, an e-chapbook of original poems and translations, was published by Mudlark in summer 2021.
