Morocco

White koubbas shine on a stony plain,

A family of djinns.

A Kasbah rises below the mountains,

Black windows in the white,

Empty as skull-sockets.

Windblown,sunscorched, the traveller

Sees before him in the setting sun

Ochre clay walls gleaming like copper.

Within,winding alley arcades

Turn the wind hurtling above to a cool draught

And all is order,rhythm and function.

Shimmering fabrics,richly worked killim,

Flaunt themselves in the kissaria.

The secretive medina harmonizes shadows

And voices...

Green tiles of a mosque roof splash

In serried waves over black and white.


On a mountain pass, a wayfarer

Casts a stone at a kerkour

To ward off evil fortune.


Water, capricious, bewitching water,

Withholding yourself or spilling in excess,

Do you share the people’s joys and sorrows?


Sea wind, desert wind...

The Arab horses of the conquerors,trotting,

Kicked up billows of dust.

Unnoticed lay the bones

Of pithecanthrope,

His only artefact a splinter of rock.


Red-hearted Morocco-taste of saltpetre and sugar...

Swarthy aroma of morning’s consecrated coffee,

Spice market’s pungent profligacy,

Thick fleshy odour of virgin olive oil...


West of Tangier, the Caves of Hercules

Echo the sea like giant seashells.

Once,local prostitutes would bring their customers here,

Carefully negotiating the rocks, lanterns in hand.

When the world still wore its first feathers,

Troglodytes swooned here in trance,

Waving stone phalli to propitiate the dark

That followed them with animal eyes.

At the Pillars of Hercules,migrating birds of prey

Ride the thermals,gaining height

For the flight across the straits.


Tetouan pulses with dissident tribes’ blood,

Brutal and sophisticated,

Nostalgic for the Andalusian dream.

From Sufis’ zaouia

Come chants and whispers

Of metaphysical debate.

In the Sephardic cemetery

Stands a whitewashed meteorite,

Freckled with votive candlewax.

Kif smokers loll in bleary backrooms,

Handling their pipes with automatic ease.


Red-stained slopes of the eastern Riff

Menace as you approach

Past stubborn square dwellings

Set in mean soil.

Not even spring can make the hillsides bloom.

Feuds are the ancient entertainment here,

Habitual as clearing the fields of stones.


The stone circle at Mzoura

Draws ductile time into a perfect ellipse,

Miming equinoctial sunset’s path.

In the cave of Bou el Kornien,the Horned Man,

Seekers kneel to suck the milky secretion

Dripping from a hallowed stalactite.

(Alexander, thou art the son of Ammon,

So the Berber oracle spoke,

Receiving the alien conqueror with honour

In his Saharan shrine.)

At the sacred pool in Chellah

Barren women peel boiled eggs

To offer to the holy black eels

Swimming up into the shady recesses,

Emissaries from another world.


At summer’s end, the tassergal swim off the coast of Pointe Imessouare.

In September, the Atlas tribes gather at Imilchil

And choose brides at the marriage fair.


At dusk,in Jemaa el Fna,Marrakesh,

Hunched figures lay out tarot cards

And trace destinies in outstretched palms;

Street urchins hiss “hashish”,

Blind beggars, expert in using their weird eyes

To accuse the world, cry to the crowd “Allah!”


Southward the Souss valley shimmers,

The oasis people harvest the date palms,

Bouncing children snatch the dropping prizes,

The women sing thanksgiving for the plenty

And the men sternly sort, weigh and pack.


In the Anti-Atlas,the Immouzer Falls

Slides reluctantly in viscous undulations,

Encasing bushes in stiff tufa sheets,

Secret dripping grottoes glistening

With wet moss and fern.

A sonorous cascade slobbers into a plunge pool,

Golden rocks with intricate curves,

Looming up through deathless blue

From veiled feminine depths.

Laughing, shouting, bathers revel,

Making love to the water.


Over Tafraoute, granite formations, mauve and red,

Transfix the eye like meteor showers, suspended in flight.

Almond trees, extending thin black sinuousbranches,

Laugh pink-white blossom at the sky;

Bitter narcotic oil they conceal,

Maliciously laced with prussic acid.


Up in the High Atlas, on a perilous pass,

The narrow road, twisting through dizzy bends,

Contorts in sheer fright, startled by the mutilated corpse

Of a toppled vehicle far below.

At night, remote stabs of light on ridiculous altitudes

Threaten still more terrifying distances to go...


At the Portuguese cistern, El Jadida,

Flooded crypt snakecharmed by a bolt of African sun,

The ceiling, vised in stone groins,

Vaults from square surly pillars

Interspersed with slender Tuscan columns,

The whole self-hypnotized in shallow water,

As pressurized sunlight jets from the central well-head.