No Healing for This Illusion, Poet - Mohamed Ellaghafi (Morocco)

MOHAMED ELLAGHAFI

Mohamed Ellaghafi a Moroccan poet, writer, and publisher, was born on December 7, 1960, in Casablanca. He is the founder and current president of the University of Moroccan Creators and the founder of the National Poetry Award in Morocco. He has published more than fifteen books, ranging from poetry to short stories, and has participated in significant national and Arab poetry gatherings. He is considered one of the pioneers of modern poetry in Morocco, with his beginnings tracing back to the early 1980s as the founder of the (Five Senses) poetic movement, an artistic movement that emerged to align with the course of modernity.
Currently, he publishes in the Qatari magazine Doha, the London-based newspaper Al-Zaman, and the Egyptian magazine Al-Ahram. He was also honored by the Moroccan Ministry of Culture in 2019, in Beirut and Cairo in 2014, and by several prestigious associations both nationally and internationally.
His works have been translated into several languages, including English, French, Persian, German, Albanian, Italian and Korean.




No Healing for This Illusion
Mohamed Ellaghafi (Morocco)
Translated into English by  Hassane Yarti (Spain)


Here I burn,
pierced through
with feeling.
How strange,
these shells hanging in clusters,
fruit of infernal death.
I know
how many secrets
the sun of night
hides among the stars.
And I know
the moon and sea
are merely lovers’ lies.
I am the eternal fool
drunk
on his own wounds.
I do not blame silence
when it drives me
toward speech,
nor emptiness
when it gathers me
back into myself.
The places once here
have crossed through me
and gone.
There is no place now.
I am a refugee
inside my own exile,
my soul suspended
awaiting, something.