The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire
Page 44
henceforth
swirling
and liquid
devant moi
et à partir de ton groin s’aventure
désormais
remous
et liquide
Summons
Sommation
I sing all things more beautiful
the chancery of fire
the chancery of water
Je chante toute chose plus belle
la chancellerie du feu
la chancellerie de l’eau
a huge somersault of promontories
and stars
a mountain exfoliating into
an orgy of islands into warm-hearted trees
une grande culbute de promontoires
et d’étoiles
une montagne qui se délite en
orgie d’îles en arbres chaleureux
the coldly calm hands of the sun
over the wild head of a destroyed city
all things more beautiful
all things more beautiful
les mains froidement calmes du soleil
sur la tête sauvage d’une ville détruite
toute chose plus belle
toute chose plus belle
the seminal will
the morning deliverance
the breathing of everyone
all and every variegated joy
le vouloir séminal
les délivrances matinales
la respiration de tous
toute chacune joie versicolore
including the memory of this world sweeping through
a tepid white gallop muffled by black
like a sea bird forgetting itself in full flight
and gliding over sleep on its pink legs
et jusqu’au souvenir de ce monde passera
un tiède blanc galop ouaté de noir
comme d’un oiseau marin qui s’est endormi en plein vol
et glisse sur le sommeil de ses pattes roses
all things more beautiful
in truth more beautiful
umbel
and terebella
toute chose plus belle
en vérité plus belle
ombelle
et térébelle
the chancery of air
the chancery of water
your eyes a fruit bursting its shell
on the stroke of midnight
and it is no longer MIDNIGHT
la chancellerie de l’air
la chancellerie de l’eau
tes yeux un fruit qui brise sa coque
sur le coup de minuit
et il n’est plus MINUIT
Space conquered
Time the conqueror
me I like time
time is nocturnal
l’Espace vaincu
le Temps vainqueur
moi j’aime le temps
le temps est nocturne
and when Space galloping
gives me up
Time comes back to set me free
et quand l’Espace galope
qui me livre
le Temps revient qui me délivre
Time
Time
Freedom
o creel without venison summoning me
le Temps
le Temps
la Liberté
ô claie sans venaison qui m’appelle
whole
native
solemn
intègre
natal
solennel
Lay of Errantry
Dit d’errance
Everything that ever was torn
in me has been torn apart
everything that ever was mutilated
in me has been mutilated
in the middle of the plate stripped of its breath
the cut fruit of the moon forever on its way
Tout ce qui jamais fut déchiré
en moi s’est déchiré
tout ce qui jamais fut mutilé
en moi s’est mutilé
au milieu de l’assiette de son souffle dénudé
le fruit coupé de la lune toujours en allée
toward its other side’s contour yet to be invented
o grapefruit
and yet what have you left of former times
vers le contour à inventer de l’autre moitié
ô pamplemousse
et pourtant que te reste-t-il du temps ancien
merely perhaps a certain urge
in the night rain to prick up my ears or tremble
and when others sing the return of Christmas
to weep softly for Christmas forever lost
and to dream of stars
astray
à peine peut-être certain sens
dans la pluie de la nuit de chauvir ou trembler
et quand d’aucuns chantent Noël revenu
de pleurer doucement Noël à tout jamais perdu
et de songer aux astres
égarés
this is the shortest day of the year
on command all has collapsed into all
the words the faces the dreams
the air itself has become infected
voici le jour le plus court de l’année
ordre assigné tout est du tout déchu
les paroles les visages les songes
l’air lui-même s’est envenimé
when my hand is extended toward a hand
I barely infer the intention
I have this so lachrymose season well in mind
the day had a taste of childhood
of something deep of mucous
quand ma main vers une main s’avance
j’en ramène à peine l’idée
j’ai bien en tête la saison si lacrimeuse
le jour avait un goût d’enfance
de chose profonde de muqueuse
toward the evilly turned sun
iron against iron an empty station
where nothing to be taken
a jib crane* grew emptily hoarse
from always moaning the same arm
vers le soleil mal tourné
fer contre fer une gare vide
où pour prendre rien
une grue s’enrouait à vide
à toujours geindre le même bras
exploded sky flayed curve
of flogged slaves’ backs
and wide-open eyes of exiles
grief treasurer of the trade winds
criminal pre-born
pre-born judged sentenced
grimoire closed words forgotten
I question my mute past
ciel éclaté courbe écorchée
de dos d’esclaves fustigés
et des yeux grands des exilés
peine trésorière des alizés
criminel avant-né
avant-né jugé condamné
grimoire fermé mots oubliés
j’interroge mon passé muet
island of blood of gulfweed
island remora’s bite
island cetaceans’ hind-laugh
island end of a word of a risen bubble
island great heart poured out
île de sang de sargasses
île morsure de remora
île arrière-rire des cétacés
île fin de mot de bulle montée
île grand cœur déversé
high the most distant the best hidden
drunk weary exhausted fisherwoman
drunk beautiful birdcaught hand
island ill-joined island disjointed
every island beckons
haute la plus lointaine la mieux cachée
ivre lasse pêcheuse exténuée
ivre belle main oiselée
île mal jointe île disjointe
toute île appelle
every island is a widow
Benin Benin o stone of the embittered
Ife* that was Ouphas
a mouth of the Zambezi
toward an Ophir* with no Albuquerque*
shall we always stretch out our arms
toute île est veuve
Bénin Bénin ô pierre d’aigris
Ife qui fut Ouphas
une embouchure de Zambèze
vers une Ophir sans Albuquerque
tendrons-nous toujours les bras
long ago o torn one
Isis* from bits and pieces
gathered her dismembered one
and the fourteen parts
took their triumphant place in the evening rays
jadis ô déchiré
Isis pièce par morceau
rassembla son dépecé
et les quatorze morceaux
s’assirent triomphants dans les rayons du soir
I invented a secret cult
my sun is the one always awaited
my desire is its obelisk
my certainty its pyramid
my weighty midnight is its sundial
the fairest of suns is the nocturnal sun
j’ai inventé un culte secret
mon soleil est celui que toujours on attend
mon désir est son obélisque
ma certitude sa pyramide
mon lourd minuit est son cadran
le plus beau des soleils est le soleil nocturne
woman’s body island overturned
woman’s body fully freighted
woman’s body foam-born
woman’s body island recovered
and which is never borne away so much
corps féminin île retournée
corps féminin bien nolisé
corps féminin écume-né
corps féminin île retrouvée
et qui jamais assez ne s’emporte
that the sky not bear
o ranunculated night
its polypary secret
woman’s body palm tree gait
coiffed by the sun with a nest
qu’au ciel il n’emporte
ô nuit renonculée
un secret de polypier
corps féminin marche de palmier
par le soleil d’un nid coiffé
in which the phoenix dies and is reborn
we are souls of noble birth
nocturnal bodies vital with lineage
direct modest intact confident
faithful trees spouting wine
I a flebile sibyl
où le phénix meurt et renaît
nous sommes âmes de bon parage
corps nocturnes vifs de lignage
francs pudiques intacts confiants
arbres fidèles vin jaillissant
moi sibylle flébilant
coagulated waters of my childhoods
into which the oars barely sink
millions of birds of my childhoods
discordant cries raised by the snows
enormous fish of my childhoods
eaux figées de mes enfances
où les avirons à peine s’enfoncèrent
millions d’oiseaux de mes enfances
cris discordants levés des neiges
énormes poissons de mes enfances
where ever was the fragrant island
illuminated by great suns
the season the region so delicious
the year paved with precious stones
où fut jamais l’île parfumée
de grands soleils illuminée
la saison l’aire tant délicieuse
l’année pavée de pierres précieuses
quartered in the perturbations of the zones
a tenebrous mixture in full cry
I saw a male bird founder
the stone is embedded in its forehead
I am looking at the lowest point in the year
aux crises des zones écartelé
en plein cri mélange ténébreux
j’ai vu un oiseau mâle sombrer
la pierre dans son front s’est fichée
je regarde le plus bas de l’année
soiled garbage body skillfully transformed
space wind of deceitful faith
space false planetary pride
slow unpolished diamond-cutter prince
might I be the sport of nigromancy
corps souillé d’ordure savamment mué
espace vent de foi mentie
espace faux orgueil planétaire
lent rustique prince diamantaire
serais-je jouet de nigromance
now better than Antilia* or Brazil
milestone in the distance
or than Corvo* Miguel Terceira
sword of a flame that racks me
I am sultan of Babiloine*
I fell the trees of Paradise
or mieux qu’Antilia ni que Brazil
pierre milliaire dans la distance
ni que Corvo Miguel Terceire
épée d’une flamme qui me bourrelle
je suis soudan de Babiloine
j’abats les arbres du Paradis
FERRAMENTS
POEMS
FERREMENTS
POÈMES
In 1960, the Seuil publishing house issued this collection of forty-nine poems, thirty-one of which had been published separately during the previous decade. Ferraments has attracted far more critical attention than any of Césaire’s titles apart from the post-1956 Notebook because it conformed nicely to the ideological vision readers gleaned from the revised Discourse on Colonialism (1955), the Présence Africaine edition of the Notebook (1956), and the version of And the Dogs Were Silent that Césaire rewrote for the theater (1956). Consequently, the elements of the comparative negritude mythography present in The Miraculous Weapons and Solar Throat Slashed were pushed into the background of readings that advanced a political agenda.
Césaire commented on the collection’s title in 1960: “[Ferraments] are quite simply the iron shackles the slaves wore during the time of the slave trade. It’s a word that belongs to the vocabulary of the slavers.” With reference to the poem “Ferment,” which plays on homophony with Ferrements, he added in the same interview that the poet’s and the poem’s role is “to be the ferment of the daily need to make hope rise” (CAA). The decade of the 1950s marked a relative lull in Césaire’s production after his remarkable output in the 1940s. However, four texts published in the magazine Les Lettres in 1954 are his first known experiments with the prose poem. The same year, the widely read Journal des Poètes published three militant poems that burnished Césaire’s image as a staunch opponent of colonialism in the eyes of the general public. A grouping of five poems printed together in the April-June 1955 issue of Présence Africaine was described as belonging to the collection Liminary Vampire, which was never published. In May 1955, Les Lettres nouvelles offered six new poems, the first of which bore the title “Liminary Vampire.” Clearly, a collection bearing that title was in the preparation stage. According to Pierre Laforgue, Césaire’s public quarrel with Louis Aragon—the former surrealist who emerged from the Second World War as the literary commissar of the French Communist Party—was a watershed moment (PTED, 524). “Reply to Depestre Haitian Poet (Elements of an Ars Poetica)” appeared in the April-June 1955 issue of Présence Africaine as well. The importance of the ensuing quarrel over regular prosody and revolutionary politics far outstripped the didactic features of Césaire’s poem, which we have edited in the “Noria” collection later in this volume. Laforgue assumes that the final ordering of Ferraments owes something to the hardening of Césaire’s position on experimental poetry in the face of Aragon’s Stalinist objections.
Three distinct voices make themselves heard in Ferraments: commitment to the anticolonialist struggle; “a fantastic evocation of black bondage throughout history”; and an elegiac voice marked by an esthetic “distance from the scene it evokes” (CCP, 23-24). In France, Césaire’s commitment to the anticolonialist st
ruggle, which was on the cusp of fruition in Africa when the collection was published, has dominated commentary of Ferraments to the exclusion of the other two voices. In North America, attention was called to this problem in the reception of Césaire’s poetry by Arnold’s Modernism and Negritude in 1981 (AMN). The present edition places Ferraments in its proper perspective at the mid-point between the heroic negritude of the 1940s, with its tragic underpinnings, and Césaire’s later nostalgic poetry, written in the wake of African independence and its eventual disappointments.
Ferraments
Ferrements
the periplus binds sweeps away all roads
the fog alone keeps its arms brings the city into port in a palanquin
and as for you a wave carries you to my feet
that boat by the way in the half-light of half-sleep
I have always known
hold me tight by the shoulders by the loins