Leisure Poems

Lamia Makaddam

"This isn't good poetry, but it's the best I can write." You may have noticed that the sentences are short and the structure fragmented. That's because I only write when I have free time. And by free time I mean the few minutes and hours I spend on the toilet and bath, or when I eat, walk and sleep. Can someone who sleeps actually write? Yes, better poems than these, and then he feeds them to the crows. You can call it leisure poems, that would be a fair name. You will read them in your spare time, which I really hope with all my heart that you will have something better to do, such as talking with your loved ones and playing with your children, because by God, by your God, how can you bear that there are in your house a man is reading on the toilet?

Translated from Arabic by Djûke Poppinga