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Tahar Bekri

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from Le Laboureur de Soleil

The Lines are Trees

The lines
are trees which grow
with the heart of the earth
in their roots

The lines
are springs which flow
with the mountain’s offering
in their memory

The lines
are leaves which blow away
with the racing wind
in their veins

The lines
are forests which walk
with the thunderstorm’s song
in their throat

Tahar Bekri, son of a station manager, attended Franco-Arab schools and studied French literature at the University of Tunis. In 1964 he began writing poetry in both French and Arabic. A militant in the student movement opposed to Bourguiba’s single-party régime, he was arrested and imprisoned in 1972
and again in 1975. In 1976 he left Tunisia and went to Paris, where he was awarded a doctorate in French-language Mahgrebin literature in 1981. His first collection, Le Laboureur de Soleil (The Ploughman of the Sun), was published in 1983, followed by collections in both French and Arabic. He currently divides his time between writing, teaching and research; he became a lecturer at the University of Paris X-Nanterre in 1995.

Patrick Williamson, born in 1960, graduated in European Studies and has taught English at professional training schools in Paris, where he now lives. The most recent volume of his own poems is Lobster Eating (Macan Press, 1997), and he has translated many French and French-Canadian poets. His versions of poems by the Vietnamese poet Cu Huy Can appeared in MPT 9.

Translated by Patrick Wiiliamson

Page(s) 179-180

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