Pantoum of Love

If there’s any reason in life,
It’s the must to fill the heart;
Because there’s no worse damnation
Than living hollow-hearted.

It’s the must to fill the heart;
The pain that’s like dancing knives
Echoing wall to wall
In the heart without any reason.

The pain is like dancing knives
Urging for sedation
To pour meaning into the empty glass
That’s mortified of thirst.

Urging for sedation,
Even the least image is a seducer
For hope to enliven an organ
That’s pumping life into us.

Even the least image is a seducer,
A mere-mirror that shows us
We are still worthy to beloved
In our silent existence.

A mere-mirror that shows us
We are human beings,
Not just lost thoughts
In an organic carcass.

We are human beings,
Needing love just as a reason
To prove that in this world
We are not alone.

If there’s any reason in life, it’s the must to fill the heart;
To prove that, in this world, we are not alone.

Benyamin Bensalah

09.02.2020

A Promenade in Strange City

The taps are just steps on this land,
No old friend calls me from the childhood,
No near familiarity where I stand,
Nor from the far place where I stood.

My mind, eye and heart are all out,
Only my ears are listening to my strange steps,
Where’s all the peace I heard about,
Wandering on the new, strange lands.

Then, a tap is sounded; a tap and another,
My childhood is echoing back from a dimension,
I can’t drop a tear, so I walk rather,
Walk, walk, walk… Maybe out of sensation.

Benyamin Bensalah

20.11.2017

To sit, to stand, to hug, to die

To push this chair away,
to croach in front of a train,
to climb a mountain carefully,
to shake my bag out in the valley,
to give a bee to my old spider,
to caress an old mother,
to eat a tasty brown bean chowder,
to pace on tiptoes, it’s muddy,
to put my hat down to the rail,
to go around the lake only,
to sit in its bottom clothed in vain,
to blush amongst the tinkling bubbles,
to flourish amongst sunflowers –
to give a nice sigh instead,
to hush a fly away only,
to dust my books when they get dirty, –
to spit into my mirror’s middle,
to sign my enemies’ peace treaty,
to kill them all with a long knife’s shearing,
examining the blood how it’s running,
looking after a girl how she’s turning over –
sitting standly, so as, instead,
burning up the capital,
to wait for birds at my morsel,
to throw my bad bread to the ground,
to make cry my good lover,
to grab her younger sister onto the lap
and if this world is my account,
leaving it so as to be in no more recount – –

oh, you tying, you dissolving,
now, on this poem typing,
making laughter, making crying,
oh, my life, you choice for trying!

Benyamin Bensalah

10.10.2019

Translated from the Hungarian poem of Attila József, “Ülni, Állni, Ölni, Halni”(1926).

About Costumes and Customs

Wear, wear whatever you dare,
Tho, the global locality has no morality…

Animals with human customs,
Humans with animal costumes
Form the world into a modest mode-

In which the smartest ones are silent
While the mass dress in rumbling drunkness
in happy hues of the humbling violent
Of the primitive homo-geniuses.

Does nudity equal with the human nature?
Which? Human as savage or creature?
Born or grown?
While sensations design human customs,
Is predestination more than a fake costume?

Does the world hold anything divine?
While we follow an immoral aurora-
Its warming colours in a frozen desert
That implies no divine unseen scenes?

Questions are colorless, unseen but existing
Alike to God’s infinite fineness-
Probing our customs if they are probed.

Methink costumes as a colorful ocean,
mesee customs as the change of the world.

We sink in the dying world’s dying ocean.

Benyamin Bensalah

19.02.2018

By a plain poet

Whether my verses are to find a plenty soil,
A soil that gives reason to the weary toil,
Whether the season will have come with care,
With a care just as my verses were fair.

Ah! The ages are against the written riches,
The soil is ruined by hidden wretches
Who dwell in the bushy swamp of ignorance,
Oh! None knows the toil of spirit hence.

Here’s the age of evil machines… Wrath!
Wrath! You spoilt my soil and path!
Wrath! You stepped on my seed and fruit!
Wealth?! You and your age toil in ruth!

What a pity I feel for your empty heart!
Hear! Hear the bitter plaint of my art.
Look! How my cry will dry out your land.
Shame! Shame on your illiterate hand!

Whether the now-time chokes my plantation,
Whether it’s all crushed by the nation,
But once, one of your sons will find my seed,
There’s coming my growing art in the deep.

Benyamin Bensalah

03.01.2017

Bastard Questions

What does describe a bastard son?
Such names as Snow, Richard or Anderson?
Whether his clothes are ruined by the weather?
Or rather they’re financed by some strained manner?

Only God knows… – says the priest.
But what if he’s from the Middle East?
Only Allah will know how many stones he claims?
How close is a bastard born to the eternal flames?

Would his manners be really bastard?
Rudy, spicy and like a slave been mastered?
Would he have the right to read and write?
Or a writing paper for him is rather a pagan rite?

What sin has done the poor mongrel?
Maybe his breeds draw a blank scoundrel?
Is his fault in his stars or among the walls?
How long he’d be hidden till the guests leave the halls?

Poor bastard, everyone knows his story,
Feeling sorrow and pity about the history.
Known, in some way he should be pampered,
But where, how and by whom is unanswered.

Benyamin Bensalah

14.07.2018