by Various
– Ce sera pour demain, à l’heure de la sieste, le mirage des épopées
Et la chevauchée du soleil sur les savanes blanches aux sables sans limites.
Et le vent est guitare dans les arbres, les barbelés sont plus mélodieux que les cordes des harpes
Et les toits se penchent écoutent, les étoiles sourient de leurs yeux sans sommeil
– Là-haut là-haut, leur visage est bleu-noir.
L’air se fait tendre au village de boue et de branchages
Et la terre se fait humaine comme les sentinelles, les chemins les invitent à la liberté.
Ils ne partiront pas. Ils ne déserteront les corvées ni leur devoir de joie.
Qui fera les travaux de honte si ce n’est ceux qui sont nés nobles?
Qui donc dansera le dimanche aux sons du tamtam des gamelles?
Et ne sont-ils pas libres de la liberté du destin?
at siesta hour, the mirage of epic poems And the sun’s ride over the white savannas with their limitless sands. And the wind is a guitar in the trees, the barbed wire is more melodious than harp strings And the roofs bend low listen, the stars smile with their sleepless eyes – Up there up there, their countenance is blue-black. The air grows tender in the village of mud and branches And the earth grows human like the sentries, the roads invite them to freedom. They will not go. They will not desert their fatigues nor their joyful duty. Who will do the shameful chores if not those who are born noble? Who then will dance on Sundays to the tom-tom sounds of cans? And are they not free with the freedom of destiny?
Saccagé le jardin des fiançailles en un soir soudain de tornade
Fauchés les lilas blancs, fané le parfum des muguets
Parties les fiancées pour les Isles de brise et pour les Rivières du Sud.
Ravaged the garden of betrothal in a sudden tornado evening Mown down the white lilacs, faded the fragrance of lily-of-the-valley Departed the fiancées for the Islands of breeze and the Rivers of the South.
Aimé Césaire
(1913– )
Césaire was a major exponent of Surrealism in its post-war prolongation, and perhaps the greatest of all francophone black poets. Absorbing for his own purposes the principles of the Surrealist aesthetic revolution, he sought to liberate language from what he saw as its strait-jacket as an instrument of colonialist oppression. The Surrealist aim is the transformation of language into the revelatory expression of a newly discovered inner life and relationship with external reality, but with Césaire the vision is specifically connected with cultural politics. The emergent identity of the Caribbean peoples speaks in his urgent, passionate rhythms and in his spellbinding images. They are images that surge from the subconscious, images that are often inexplicable in rational terms, and yet they impose themselves with an incontrovertible power. They also transcend the uneasiness that persists in his use of the language of the colonialist European society.
His innovative verse owes less to the orthodox French tradition than the relatively transparent output of Senghor, and certainly injects more new blood into the organism of poetry.
Having played a major role, with Senghor and Léon-Gontram Damas, in founding the ‘Négritude’ movement, Césaire returned to Martinique as a teacher in 1939. His anticolonialism became increasingly radical during the Vichy administration of the French West Indies, and he developed the concept of cultural and political autonomy for black Caribbean states. In 1945 he was elected mayor of Fort-de-France and a député to the French parliament, initially (and a little uncomfortably) as a Communist and later as leader of the Martinican Progressive Party. His literary impact in France was delayed. By 1945 he was already well known in New York, where Breton had publicized his work, and where a number of translations of poems had appeared ahead of the publication of the originals in Paris.
Major volumes: Les Armes miraculeuses 1946, Soleil cou coupé 1948, Corps perdu 1949, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (definitive edition) 1956, Ferrements 1959, etc. (Césaire then wrote increasingly for the theatre.)
N’ayez point pitié
Fumez marais
les images rupestres de l’inconnu
vers moi détournent le silencieux crépuscule
de leur rire
Fumez ô marais coeur d’oursin
les étoiles mortes apaisées par des mains merveilleuses jaillissent
de la pulpe de mes yeux
Fumez fumez
l’obscurité fragile de ma voix craque de cités
flamboyantes
et la pureté irrésistible de ma main appelle
de loin de très loin du patrimoine héréditaire
le zèle victorieux de l’acide dans la chair
de la vie – marais–
telle une vipère née de la force blonde de l’éblouissement.
Have no Mercy
Steam swamp
the rupestral images of the unknown / divert towards me the silent twilight / of their laughter
Steam O swamp sea-urchin heart / the dead stars soothed by miraculous hands spurt / from the pulp of my eyes Steam steam / the brittle darkness of my voice crackles with cities / that blaze / and the irresistible purity of my hand summons / from afar from very far away from the genetic heritage / the victorious ardour of acid in the flesh / of life – swamp–
like a viper born of the golden power of blinding light.
Soleil serpent
Soleil serpent oeil fascinant mon oeil
et la mer pouilleuse d’îles craquant aux doigts des roses
lance-flamme et mon corps intact de foudroyé
l’eau exhausse les carcasses de lumière perdues dans le couloir sans pompe
des tourbillons de glaçons auréolent le coeur fumant des corbeaux
nos coeurs
c’est la voix des foudres apprivoisées tournant sur leurs gonds de lézarde
transmission d’anolis au paysage de verres cassés c’est
les fleurs vampires à la relève des orchidées
élixir du feu central
feu juste feu manguier de nuit couvert d’abeilles mon
désir un hasard de tigres surpris aux soufres mais l’éveil
stanneux se dore des gisements enfantins
et mon corps de galet mangeant poisson mangeant
colombes et sommeils
le sucre du mot Brésil au fond du marécage.
Serpent Sun
Serpent sun eye mesmerizing my eye / and the sea verminous with islands crackling in the fingers of flame-thrower / roses and my intact lightning-struck body / the water lifts up the carcasses of light lost in the unostentatious corridor / eddies of icicles halo the smoking hearts of crows / our hearts / it is the voice of tamed thunderbolts turning on their crevice hinges / transmission of anoles1 to the landscape of broken glasses it is / the vampire flowers coming to relieve the orchids / elixir of the central fire / fire just fire night-mango covered with bees my / desire a chance encounter with tigers surprised in sulphurs but the stannous / awakening is gilded with childhood deposits / and my pebble body eating fish eating / doves and slumbers / the sugar of the word Brazil in the depths of the swamp.
Perdition
nous frapperons l’air neuf de nos têtes cuirassées
nous frapperons le soleil de nos paumes grandes ouvertes
nous frapperons le sol du pied nu de nos voix
les fleurs mâles dormiront aux criques des miroirs
et l’armure même des trilobites
s’abaissera dans le demi-jour de toujours
sur des gorges tendres gonflées de mines de lait
et ne franchirons-nous pas le porche
le porche des perditions?
un vigoureux chemin aux veineuses jaunissures
tiède
où bondissent les buffles des colères insoumises
court
avalant la bride des tornades mÛres
aux balisiers sonnants des riches crépuscules
Perdition
/> we will strike the new air with our armour-plated heads / we will strike the sun with our wide open palms / we will strike the soil with the bare foot of our voices / the male flowers will sleep in the coves of mirrors / and the very armour of the trilobites / will be lowered in the half-light of forever / on tender breasts swelled with lodes of milk / and will we not pass through the porch / the porch of perditions? a vigorous path with veiny yellowings / tepid / where the buffaloes of unsubdued angers bound / runs / gulping the bridle of ripe tornadoes / amid the ringing cannas of rich twilights
Prophétie
là où l’aventure garde les yeux clairs
là où les femmes rayonnent de langage
là où la mort est belle dans la main comme un oiseau saison de lait
là où le souterrain cueille de sa propre génuflexion un luxe de prunelles plus violent que des chenilles
là où la merveille agile fait flèche et feu de tout bois
là où la nuit vigoureuse saigne une vitesse de purs végétaux
là où les abeilles des étoiles piquent le ciel d’une ruche plus ardente que la nuit
là où le bruit de mes talons remplit l’espace et lève à rebours la face du temps
là où l’arc-en-ciel de ma parole est chargé d’unir demain à l’espoir et l’infant à la reine,
Prophecy
where adventure keeps its eyes bright / where women radiate with language / where death is lovely in the hand like a bird in milk season / where the covert place gathers from its own genuflexion an extravagance of sloes that is more violent than caterpillars / where the agile marvel makes everything grist to its mill
where the robust night bleeds a swiftness of pure plants
where the bees of the stars stitch into the sky a ruche1 more fiery than the night / where the sound of my heels fills space and raises against the grain the face of time / where the rainbow of my words is charged to unite tomorrow with hope and the infant with the queen,
d’avoir injurié mes maîtres mordu les soldats du sultan
d’avoir gémi dans le désert
d’avoir crié vers mes gardiens
d’avoir supplié les chacals et les hyènes pasteurs de caravanes
je regarde
la fumée se précipite en cheval sauvage sur le devant de la scène ourle un instant la lave de sa fragile queue de paon puis se déchirant la chemise s’ouvre d’un coup la poitrine et je la regarde en îles britanniques en îlots en rochers déchiquetés se fondre peu à peu dans la mer lucide de l’air
où baignent prophétiques
ma gueule
ma révolte
mon nom.
for having insulted my masters bitten the sultan’s soldiers / for having groaned in the wilderness / for having screamed at my gaolers / for having invoked the jackals and the hyenas the shepherds of caravans
I watch / the smoke hurls itself like a wild horse to the front of the stage hems for an instant the lava of its brittle peacock tail then tearing its shirt suddenly lays open its chest and I watch it melt little by little into British islands into islets into jagged rocks in the lucid sea of the air / where bathing prophetically are / my face / my revolt / my name.
Tam-tam I
A Benjamin Péret
à même le fleuve de sang de terre
à même le sang de soleil brisé
à même le sang d’un cent de clous de soleil
à même le sang du suicide des bêtes à feu
à même le sang de cendre le sang de sel le sang des sangs d’amour
à même le sang incendié d’oiseau feu
hérons et faucons
montez et brÛlez
Tom-Tom I
for Benjamin Péret
on the very river of blood of earth / on the very blood of shattered sun / on the very blood of a hundred stabs of sunlight / on the very blood of the fire-beasts’ suicide / on the very blood of ashes the blood of salt the blood of the bloods of love / on the very blazing firebird blood / herons and falcons / rise and burn
Ode à la Guinée1
Et par le soleil installant sous ma peau une usine de force et d’aigles
et par le vent sur ma force de dent de sel compliquant ses passes les mieux sues
et par le noir le long de mes muscles en douces insolences de sèves montant
et par la femme couchée comme une montagne descellée et sucée par les lianes
et par la femme au cadastre mal connu où le jour et la nuit jouent à la mourre des eaux de source et des métaux rares
Ode to Guinea2
And by the sun equipping beneath my skin a factory of strength and of eagles / and by the wind elaborating its best-known thrusts over the salty outcrop of my strength / and by the blackness rising along the length of my muscles in soft insolences of sap / and by the woman lying like a mountain unsealed and sucked by the lianas / and by the woman with the unknown cadastre where day and night play mora3 with spring
et par le feu de la femme où je cherche le chemin des fougères et du Fouta-Djallon
et par la femme fermée sur la nostalgie s’ouvrant
JE TE SALUE
Guinée dont les pluies fracassent du haut grumeleux des volcans un sacrifice de vaches pour mille faims et soifs d’enfants dénaturés
Guinée de ton cri de ta main de ta patience
il nous reste toujours des terres arbitraires
et quand tué vers Ophir ils m’auront jamais muet
de mes dents et de ma peau que l’on fasse
un fétiche féroce gardien du mauvais œil
comme m’ébranle me frappe et me dévore ton solstice
en chacun de tes pas Guinée
muette en moi-même d’une profondeur astrale de méduses
waters and rare metals / and by the fire of the woman in which I seek the way to the ferns and to the Fouta-Djallon / and by the opening of the woman closed upon her yearning1
I HAIL YOU
Guinea whose rains smash from the gritty heights of the volcanoes a sacrifice of cows for a thousand hungers and thirsts of unnatural children / Guinea of your cry of your hand of your patience / we still have some arbitrary lands left to us / and when killed towards Ophir2 they will have me ever mute / from my teeth from my skin let there be made / a ferocious fetish guardian of the evil eye / as your solstice shakes me strikes me and devours me / in each of your footsteps Guinea / wordless within myself with an astral profundity of medusae
André Frénaud
(1907– )
As a poet, Frénaud was something of a late developer, and his very personal voice is largely uninfluenced by Surrealism. If anything, he is closer to the Existentialists in his constructive recognition that ‘there is no paradise’ (the title of one of his volumes), and that the search for meaning in life constitutes in itself the only meaning that life can have. Metaphysics can offer nothing more, despite man’s incurable probing.
Born in an industrial area of Burgundy, he has lived mainly in Paris, working as a civil servant in railway administration. His pre-war poems and those written in captivity at a POW camp in Germany made a considerable impact in the 1940s with their tenderness and realism, their sense of passionate questing balanced by lucid irony, and since the war he has continued his search for an art of the possible in a world where fulfilment is elusive.
Volumes: Les Rois Mages 1943 (contains poems written 1938–43); Il n’y a pas de Paradis 1965 (poems 1943–60); La Sainte Face 1968 (poems 1938–66); Depuis toujours déjà 1970 (poems 1953–68); Haeres 1982 (poems 1969–81), etc.
Naissance
à Charles Singevin
La mer qui avait tant navigué, ma mer noire,
enfin s’est approchée de la terre ma mère,
la vieille depuis si longtemps d’avec moi séparée.
La frange, où l’œil du cheval hagard
perce à travers la crinière,
s’est aplatie sur les pierres et le sel.
O silence assourdissant de
ce jour!
L’homme se relève hébété.
Une statue de marbre pur
s’éveille entre ses bras.
J’emporte ma naissance et je vais chez les hommes,
je chante.
Birth
for Charles Singevin
The sea that had done so much sailing, my black sea, has drawn close at last to the earth my mother, that old woman separated from me for so long.
The fringe, where the wild horse’s eye bores through the mane, has sprawled itself on the stones and the salt. O deafening silence of this day! The man stands up in stupefaction. A statue of pure marble awakens in his arms.
I bear away my birth and I go among men, I am singing.
Maison à vendre
Tant de gens ont vécu là, qui aimaient
l’amour, le réveil et enlever la poussière.