I begin a story which could never exist
In the obscure meanderings
Returning with fantastic
Repetition to some civilizations
The strength of pages
Which turn with a multicoloured rhythm
Of the prodigious
Inventions
The stories are told but
They do not explode
Because they fuse
Silently to the oppressed spirits
And are engulfed by a cavernous defeat
Which loses itself and is forgotten
Why do the travellers look for
Total Accomplishment
Of the absolutely unreal or
Provisional separation
Bursting in the veins
Like nonfatal poison
Evidence is not Truth
Because the vision can change
So why idolise
The bodies without feeling
Which swollen by unconscious dissatisfaction
Refuse to rebel
And accept the invigorating
Neutrality of the objects
Too much wanted and misunderstood
Traps opening
Like enormous mouths
But the pleasures are transient
The immobility is latent
Aggression and trembling agony
In the night obscured by
The ignorance and great
Beauty of the passing sirens
Belonging to the hereditary Power
Of the Man who holds the keys
Of Destiny
The immobility is the strength
Fragile and compassionate
Of the Mothers columns
Of the descendences
Messengers from the womb
Of the obligatory reproductions
The immobility is the serenity
Contagious the silence in s
World where the explosion of
Revolution Blocked up by
The walls built by
Possessive hands
The immobility is the repressed dream
Of the impossible escape
To far horizons
That disappear into the thickness
Of the endless night
Not thinking is to accept
The conditions with no conditions

Not thinking is to burst out laughing
Like a bomb
Obscured by the night
By the incredible misadventure
Of limited freedom
No matter what the silence
In the illuminated darkness
Accepting the pleasures of the dark of night
And rejecting the immaculate morning
Who are you women of the mountains
Nymphs of all eras who
Amaze the hardest hearts
Do you really exist
Have you really felt
The eyes of this artist on your bodies
Who bravely
Wanted to capture
This ecstasy
Not only the
Repression and Exploitation
Who are you Women who submit
To sensual passion
In the shadowy houses
With half opened windows
Looking into interior courtyards
Women fatal and mysterious
Powerful in their innocence
Out of the ordinary
Out of time
But who shut their eyes to
The magical thread of
Racial multiplicity
They are the dream
Of a fragile mystery
Who has travelled
Desperately
Searching for peace
And newness
Deformed Orientalist
In the beginning of a destruction
Inevitable but
Positive


Houria Niati
London 1982