by Aime Cesaire
I have had occasion in the bewilderment of cities to search for the right animal to adore. So I worked my way back to the first times. Undoing cycles untying knots crushing plots removing covers killing hostages I searched.
Ferret. Tapir. Uprooter.
Where where where the animal who warned me of floods
Where where where the bird who led me to honey
Where where where the bird who revealed to me the fountainheads
the memory of great alliances betrayed great friendships lost through our fault exalted me
Where where where
Where where where
The word made vulgar to me
O serpent sumptuous back do you enclose in your sinuous lash the powerful soul of my grandfather?
Greetings to you serpent through whom morning shakes its beautiful mango mauve December chevelure and for whom the milk-invented night tumbles its luminous mice down its wall
Greetings to you serpent grooved like the bottom of the sea and which my heart truly unbinds for us like the premise of the deluge
Greetings to you serpent your reputation is more majestic than their gait and the peace their God gives not you hold supremely.
Serpent delirium and peace
over the hurdles of a scurrilous wind the countryside dismembers for me secrets whose steps resounded at the outlet of the millenary trap of gorges that they tightened to strangulation.
to the trashcan! may they all rot in portraying the banner of a black crow weakening in a beating of white wings.
Serpent
broad and royal disgust overpowering the return in the sands of deception
spindrift nourishing the vain raft of the seagull
in the pale tempest of reassuring silences you the least frail warm yourself
You bathe yourself this side of the most discordant cries on the dreamy spumes of grass
when fire is exhaled from the widow boat that consumes the cape of the echo’s flash
just to make your successive deaths shiver all the more—green frequenting of the elements—your threat.
Your threat yes your threat body issuant from the raucous haze of bitterness where it corrupted the concerned lighthouse keeper and that whistling takes its little gallop time toward the assassin rays of discovery.
Serpent
charming biter of womens’ breasts and through whom death steals into the maturity in the depths of a fruit sole lord lord alone whose multiple image places on the strangler fig’s altar the offering of a chevelure that is an octopodal threat a sagacious hand that does not pardon cowards
Aime Césaire: The Collected Poetry
Copyright ©:
2010. Translated by Clayton Eshleman & A. James Arnold
A few random poems:
- Василий Лебедев-Кумач – Москва майская
- In Due Observance Of An Ancient Rite by William Wordsworth
- The Routine Things Around The House by Stephen Dunn
- Алексей Ржевский – Рондо (И всякий так живет)
- That Light by Paul Hostovsky
- Autumn Song by W H Auden
- Robert Burns: Address To Wm. Tytler, Esq., Of Woodhouselee: With an Impression of the Author’s Portrait.
- Two Years Later by William Butler Yeats
- THE DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN IN MUCH COMPANY by Abraham Cowley
- Вера Павлова – Я дождевой червь
- Олег Бундур – Чем пахнет мама
- Invocation To The Earth, February 1816 by William Wordsworth
- O Beauty, Passing Beauty! poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- O aye my wife she dang me (Song) by Robert Burns
- Владимир Маяковский – Наше воскресенье
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
- Every Sect has a Faith – Har Qaum Raast Raahay poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Couplet poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Couplet 7 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Couplet 6 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Couplet 5 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Couplet 4 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Couplet 3 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Couplet 2 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Couplet 11 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Couplet 10 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Couplet 1 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- O Wondrous Ecstatic Eyes – Chashmay Mastay poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Chaap Tilak poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Celebrate Spring Today poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Bahut Kathin Hai poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Babul poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- What a Glow Everywhere I see – Aaj Rung Hai poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Celebrate Spring Today poem with a translation – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Words You Said poem – Andrew Neil Maternick poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Unpromised Land, Montgomery, Alabama poem – Andrew Hudgins poems | Poems and Poetry
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