Firstly, I experienced the death of my great-grandmother as a child;
it wasn’t sad, but rather shocking to see an inanimate body
and the mourning people around burdened with silence.
I couldn’t understand much of that picture that time,
but my mother was in grief and crying for a long;
she must have a lot of memories with her,
all reaching a dead-end road.
Then, my kind friend – our dog was beaten to death by my old neighbor;
she was my father instead of father and friend instead of friends,
a true mate that was hard to imagine to get so brutalized.
The shock seeing her missing dried up even my cry;
that time, I imagined how my mother might feel
when someone close disappears
and leaves a terrible hole.
Still a child, after the dog I loved, I saw the corpse of the dog I hated;
that huge dog been let out to the side when I walked daily
scared me and made the streets ominous, evil-holding.
I wanted to think of it as a big relief from my fear
that the big, evil dog won’t be around after me,
but I felt grief seeing its bloodshed death;
will it leave a same hole in someone?
Then, news of deaths came and went around with daily regularity;
in the broadcast Queens died, presidents, victims and criminals
as well as at school, acknowledging dead kings and poets.
I thought that great deeds leave a thing to remember,
not to let people die as a fly or a cornered spider,
but I quickly changed my mind at the museum
where generations lay without any memory.
Starting to grow, I realized many terrible things while just living;
terrible things like whole families, weekend parties
and such things I never could have in my life.
These left a hole greater than death itself;
leaving an unknown, missing hole in me,
a hole of me whom I could be,
saying: I never was alive.
Somewhat later, having assured that the holes of non-living remain;
they mark the person and it marked even my personality,
I tried to meet Death by my own, to rejoin the holes.
I failed and left but awkwardness of craze,
my close ones saw me abnormal
and saw no danger seeing me
as a hole, simply disappear.
With knowledge, I understood it later and it made more sense than any;
a person who didn’t live and left no experience
won’t leave holes or griefs in nobody.
All the synopsis-held memories,
all the heartbeat on the globe
like life and death in books
have no meaning at all.
Benyamin Bensalah
12.07.2020