by Aime Cesaire
In the foreground and in longitudinal flight a dried-up brook drowsy roller of obsidian pebbles. In the background a decidedly not calm architecture of torn down burgs of eroded mountains on whose glimpsed phantom serpents chariots a cat’s-eye and alarming constellations are born. It is a strange firefly cake hurled into the gray face of time, a vast scree of shards of ikons of blazons of lice in the beard of Saturn. On the right very curiously standing against the squamous wall of crucified butterfly wings open in majesty a gigantic bottle whose very long golden neck drinks a drop of blood from the clouds. As for me I am no longer thirsty. It gives me pleasure to think of the world undone like an old copra mattress like an old voodoo necklace like the perfume of a felled peccary. I am no longer thirsty. All heads belong to me. It is sweet to be gentle as a lamb. It is sweet to open the great sluicegates of gentleness:
through the shaken sky
through the exploded stars
through the tutelary silence
from very far beyond myself I come toward you
woman sprung from a beautiful laburnum
and your eyes wounds barely closing
on your modesty at having been born
It is I who sings with a voice still caught up in the babbling of elements. It is sweet to be a piece of wood a cork a drop of water in the torrential flood of the end and of the new beginning. It is sweet to doze off in the shattered heart of things. I no longer have any sort of thirst. My sword made from a shark’s-tooth smile is becoming terribly useless. My mace is very obviously out of season and out of play. Rain is falling. It is a crisscross of rubble, it is a skein of steel for reinforced concrete, it is an incredible stowage of the invisible by first-rate ties, it is a branchwork of syphilis, it is the diagram of a brandy bender, it is the graphic representation of a seismic floodtide, it is a conspiracy of dodders, it is the nightmare’s head impaled on the lance point of a mob mad for peace and for bread.
I advance to the region of blue lakes. I advance to the region of sulphur springs.
I advance to my crateriform mouth toward which have I struggled enough? What have I to discard? Everything by god everything. I am stark naked. I have discarded everything. My genealogy. My widow. My companions. I await the boiling, I await the baptism of sperm. I await the wingbeat of the great seminal albatross supposed to make a new man of me. I await the immense tap, the vertiginous slap that will consecrate me as a knight of a plutonian order. I await in the depths of my pores the sacred intrusion of benediction.
And suddenly it is the outpouring of great rivers
it is the friendship of toucans’ eyes
it is the fulminating erection of virgin mountains
I am pregnant with my despair in my arms
I am pregnant with my hunger in my arms and my disgust in my mouth
I am invested. Europe patrols my veins like a pack of filariae at the stroke of midnight. To think that their philosophies tried to provide them with morals. That ferocious race won’t have put up with it.
Europe pig iron fragment
Europe low tunnel oozing a bloody dew
Europe old bag Europe
Europe old dog Europe worm-drawn coach
Europe peeling tattoo Europe your name is a raucous clucking and a muffled shock
I unfold my handkerchief it is a flag
I have donned my beautiful skin
I have adjusted my beautiful clawed paws
Europe
I hereby join all that powders the sky with its insolence all that is loyal and fraternal all that has the courage to be eternally new all that knows how to yield its heart to the fire all that has the strength to emerge from an inexhaustible sap all
that is calm and self-assured
all that is not you
Europe
eminent name of the turd
Aimé Césaire: The Collected Poetry
Copyright ©:
2010. Translated by Clayton Eshleman & A. James Arnold
A few random poems:
- Life, wait for me by Martin Zakovski
- Вера Павлова – Трогающему грудь
- Memorial Tablet by Siegfried Sassoon
- Ольга Седакова – Вьюга
- Psalm 86 poem – John Milton poems
- My arm for a pillow by Yosa Buson
- Allegiances by William Stafford
- Аля Кудряшева – Ну что я могу ответить
- Raw Silk by Vinita Agrawal
- Владимир Высоцкий – Всё меньше вас, участники войны
- I Know From my Bed by Michael Lee Johnson
- Вероника Тушнова – Мать
- Additions: The Fire at Tranter Sweatley’s by Thomas Hardy
- Вера Звягинцева – Карусель
- In A Vacant House by Philip Levine
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Как жаль, что много лет назад
- Как живёшь ветеран милиции
- Какая мама молодец
- Как хочу я в День влюбленных
- Как хорошо, что рядом верная подруга
- Как хорошо иметь подругу
- Как тяжело, когда идет война
- Как в поход я собираюсь
- Как воздух, математика нужна
- Как сегодня тихо в классе
- Как Снегурочка дела
- Как тамада я выступаю в роли теоретика
- Как привить ребенку любовь к чтению: советы и рекомендации – Poetry Monster
- Как просто было в юности
- Как прекрасны все цветы
- Ирина Гурина – Как пчёлы чуть не поссорились
- Ирина Гурина – Как появляются листочки
- Как прекрасно твое имя
- Как не бывает утро без рассвета
- Как небо сходится с водой
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works