What I am attempting to do here is to translate one
of my texts from Arabic. By way of background, I will say that whenever
useless stuff accumulates in your home, gets musty and gathers dust, what you typically do
is to haul it over to the municipal landfill where you pay a nominal fee so
they cleanly dispose of it. I am Dr. Ali Raddaoui. Your take on what you read matters to me,
whatever it is.
As the late-night began to beat a retreat
And the builders of the universe were fast
asleep
My mind was made up.
I packed my memory gears
From among my dusty shelves
And computer chips
The margins of dog-eared magazines
And the traces of whispers
And midnight chats.
Not that I was in a hurry.
I lined them up prints and notebooks
Some scenes gestated out of pure fantasy
Others were larva moving about in my entrails in
real-time
I put them together
I placed one hand where my veins crossed
And with the other
I tied the rope over them to my back,
Off to the landfill office.
…
Off to the landfill office
One of my inklings looked askance at me
Under a drizzle from the sky’s eye
I peered into dark matter.
Behind me was a light year
Whose fragments I had gathered
Without much thought
While listening to the Four Seasons.
Ahead of me an hour’s trip.
I shoved my way through the dark
To the Manager’s office
And arrived there an hour before the bells rang
dawn.
She greeted me with no pomp
I placed my bundle on the scales
She made me pay the disposal fee many times over
And I found me throwing away my memory
On a pile of debris from men and women of days
gone by and those to come
Thereupon, I returned to my home
As I was before the memories.
Keywords: poetry, free verse, translation, Arabic, English, city landfill
