Casablanca
Casablanca
Here is the spring, looking beyond the pale,
Unhealthy, like a sick, depressed and very frail;
Faintly screaming in a galled, elderly-like sound:
My lively offsprings everywhere used to bound,
As I was once a fertile, generous flow of hope;
My colours covered every plain, hill and slope.
I was the realm of joy, of fancy and sweat dreams,
The occult of beauty, of inspiration that streams;
Ask my ancestors, my former lovers, my witnesses
About my old celebrations in colourful dresses!
Now, I doubt my grand-children will recognize me
If we all happen to survive after a beseeching plea.
*****
I’m the spring without fixed time nor green field,
Before, my views mesmerized everyone on earth
Now reeking of waste; my beauty has been killed;
My seeds have been buried alive even before birth.
I’m the spring, not on the schedule but behind;
Once, I was timely with a beginning and an end,
My days now go by as soon as they’ve come out.
Leaving me wrapped in heat and shod in drought,
They withdraw discretely, ignored and madly cross,
Driving my sparkling treasure to a regrettable loss.
*****
I ‘m the spring, do you still recognize my features
With a vanishing beauty that no more captures?
Look at the flags in fading colours; in the height,
You fancy they’re dancing out of glory, at first sight,
But they tremble and recoil out of panic, out of fright
Of becoming grey because of smokes that mass,
Or out of air sickness growing and leaping to the skies,
Foiling my generous rains from reviving the grass,
Smothering the breath, killing my birds and butterflies.
*****
I’m the spring whose name’s been bound to conflicts,
Not to any more lyrics, but blood shedding that inflicts
Pain; to some systems’uprise for renewal recesses;
Yet, this has taken away love and honest promises.
The earth has blushed out of disappointing shame
Then has gone pale out of horror and burning flame.
My name’s thus been falsified, my colours let alone;
My identity and the very spirit of seasons are gone.
*****
Tell me, then, where is the greenness of my lands
My butterflies dances and my birds’ singing bands?
Where is the magical dye of my blue skies and seas,
My flowers and my sheltering habitats of my species?
Where are my sunny smiles, my visitors, my admirers
And the yearning, the whispers of my numerous lovers?
I’m the spring, not a byword; if you can’t give me a faint salute,
Nor save my face, make of me the autumn’s substitute!
© Photo by Kaoutar Rouas
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