Sub Urbis in Ignem,
Outside the City In the Fire.
The sky is grey and sullen,
The glistening sun, history,
Pale fumes are all that gleam now,
Over concrete, dirt and apathy.
II
Here in the Banlieues we are nameless,
Except for Mantes La Jolie where we riot,
Its name belongs to us all now,
Disgrace? Resistance, defiance, rebellion.
III
Several people died there, cops, Arabs, children,
Victims of the Urban Wasteland,
Forgotten tomorrow.
The rioters wre young, angry at betrayal,
For they betrayed their country,
To the femme fatale France.
IV
Harkis they called themselves,
Stressing seperation,
Lost among two cultures, finding little in either,
With the colonialists in the civil war,
They fled the country after,
Without Olive branch or Armalite,
To three women of justice,
And a new beginning.
V
No privelige they found,
But displacement, disillusion,
They began again to seethe.
Algeria`s struggle rages now ,
The Harkis just beginning.
VI
I too am a Harki,
Cocooned in discontent,
Superfluos, redundant, talent dispelled,
Cliched clerical tasks, menial mundanity
Meaningless!
I grip my hair and tear,
And yearn for change.
VII
Creteil isn`t Mantes La Jolie,
The excitement, variety would be misplaced,
Just a commercial monolith
Where the forgotten people work,
I among them, dissatisfied,
Different reason, same feeling,
Hope for Banlieue hystericism
To take us all with rage.
-December 3 1991.
