Raïhanyat,

Moroccan Writer Mohamed Saïd Raïhani’s Website

WAITING FOR THE MORNING

(A Collection of Short Stories)

(Stories versus Songs)

TEXT 6:

ETERNITY

So, you think you can tell

Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field

From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade

Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange

A walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish you were here!

We're just two lost souls

Swimming in a fish bowl,

Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?

The same old fears.
Wish you were here!

" Wish you were here!", a song by The Pink Floyd

The sun is in the heart of the sky.

The wall clock strikes midday.

The train arrives to the railway station.

The windows of the first-carriages look directly on the old cafe rooted on the railway platform, on the margin of movement and voyage.

Travellers look out of the windows at a prominent drawing-board nailed clumsily on the back wall in the middle of which Chronos, god of time, is devouring his children. Under the board, a group of café customers sit lamenting alternatively from monotony:

1-Who’s got a watch?

2-Nobody has.

1-What can be the time?

2-We don’t know.

1-We’d better know the time by some movement?

2-Everything is fixed in its place. Nothing moves.....

1-The movement of the sun, for instance.

2-The sun is still in the same place where it has always been...

The sun is in the heart of the sky.

The wall-clock strikes midday.

The train arrives to the railway station.

The windows of the first-carriages look directly onto an old drawing-board inside which a snake twists around itself in a spotted circling shape to devour its own tail. Under the drawing-board, two café customers are seated abreast, talking without exchanging a glance:

1-Listen to this song!

2-Mmm!

1-Is this spring?

2-You may be right.

1-When did spring come?

2-I don’t know.

1-Even the sun doesn’t give an idea....

The sun is in the heart of the sky.

The wall-clock strikes midday.

The train arrives to the railway station.

The windows of the first carriages look directly on to childish drawings in the middle of the terrace back-wall: entangled circles, clear circles, endless circles.... Under which sits a young man reading a book before his companion interrupts his concentration:

1-What are you reading?

2-A book on the biological clock in living creatures’ lives....

1-What kind of clock is it ?

2-It’s inside living beings. Each body is supplied with hidden clocks that controls the times of sleep, hunger.... that’s what the book is about.

1-What about Man, has he an internal clock?

2- I don’t know.

1- I see no clock outside us. So there can be none inside us.... look at the sun!

The sun is in the heart of the sky

The wall-clock strikes midday.

The train arrives to the railway-station.

The windows of the first carriages look directly onto... Eternity.

CONTENTS