More rich taints yer! - Mamoudou Lamine Kane

At Nouakchott’s reddened intersections,
Baseless arrogance behind each wheel
Pouring down pot-holed roads
Towards who knows what hazy occupations.

In an opulent interior in the capital’s
Island of riches, the pinched lips of the lady
In sumptuous brocade, hymn eternal litanies.
Her fingers, swollen with precious metal,
Can scarcely hide the ruby beneath the rug.

In the land of a million parp-parps,
Half a million xenon headlights
And billions of grains of sand,
Cursing god is interlaced
With litanies on the virtues of lust.

So much faith bound to the marrow of greed,
Between bloated accounts and stomachs!
So much bluster on account of morals,
Vacillating in its limbo of gold!

In the privacy of dusk
Blackened thoughts are heated white hot.
Return to solitude for clarity
But find the shadow cast there too.

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Mamoudou Lamine Kane (born 1977) Mauritania
Translated by Delaina Haslam and The Poetry Translation Workshop
Source: Poetry Translation Centre