In the hovel of grandma, there were homesick echoes of
Constant clouds, billows and heights
Sniffling out of immortal sighs,
And I, the ghost of some lost city of Minerva,
Hovering around the roofless cottage of the dead,
Heard the sound of a shovel digging in the earth,
Smelled the mysteries of my entombed olden times,
The taste of saintly water flawing from mama’s old guerba,
Bowls of balmy goat milk she would milk,
Milk and butter churn every dawn,
For us
My granny
Never had had a Don Juan, but
Why would she need an unripe bud?
Her ageing wrinkles whispered.
Corroded, her tissues
Through and through scattered
But all in here,
In that old stable cave, where my father’s bare feet
Would relate ghoulish stories of serene hunger, and
Parlous biting cold
Victim of my whimsical daydreams,
Granny’s red braids toddle in her bedouin redwood
The stitch on her chin batters on my eardrums, and
The ruby henna feeding her hands on and on
Calls for my Bedouin pride:
I am daughter of the Sahara,
The dunes know better my flesh, for
The dunes have long nursed my blood.
My eyes wandered in and away the hovel
Wherein every night grand mother’s spirit went around
A voyager in this historic land, a voyager
By dawn, I left my memoirs,
Bereaved of my chronicles, nude with no bra
In the Sahara, who cares if your bosoms are callow or full-blown?
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