à crever
pour toute aire
l’épaisse prunelle du crime
contraband
you barely restrain a god who is forever escaping
your smoke, my famine, your feast
Freedom
contrebande
vous tenez mal un dieu et qui toujours s’échappe
ta fumée, ma famine, ta fête
Liberté
A Blank to Fill on the Travel Pass of Pollen
Blanc à remplir sur la carte voyageuse du pollen
Were there in the desert
but one drop of water dreaming very quietly,
in the desert were there
but one flying seed dreaming very loudly,
it would be enough,
rust of weapons, cracks in stones, refuse of gloom
desert, desert, I endure your challenge
a blank to fill on the travel pass of pollen
N’y eût-il dans le désert
qu’une seule goutte d’eau qui rêve tout bas,
dans le désert n’y eût-il
qu’une graine volante qui rêve tout haut,
c’est assez,
rouillure des armes, fissure des pierres, vrac des ténèbres
désert, désert, j’endure ton défi
blanc à remplir sur la carte voyageuse du pollen.
A Little Song for Crossing a Big River
Petite chanson pour traverser une grande rivière
after the Yoruba
d’après le Yoruba
I saw myself crossing a river.
For crossing you river, of the river here is
the King, Oh! of the sun here is the King!
There, in that land, of lofty palm trees I saw
some, collapsing with fruit, right to the humus bending
their sumptuous strength, beneath the burden, slain.
Je me vis franchissant un fleuve.
À te franchir fleuve, de la rivière voici
le Roi, Oh ! du soleil voici le Roi !
Là, dans ce pays-là, de grands palmiers je vis
qui, effondrés de fruits, jusqu’à l’humus courbaient
leur fastueuse force, sous le fardeau, tuée.
In Truth. . .
En vérité…
the stone crumbling itself into clods
the desert sifting itself into wheat
the day spelling itself into birds
the convict the slave the pariah
the stature harmoniously fulfilled
the night fecundated the end of hunger
la pierre qui s’émiette en mottes
le désert qui se blute en blé
le jour qui s’épelle en oiseaux
le forçat l’esclave le paria
la stature épanouie harmonique
la nuit fécondée la fin de la faim
of spit in the face
and this history I walk around in better than during the day
du crachat sur la face
et cette histoire parmi laquelle je marche mieux que durant le jour
the night on fire the night unbound the dream coerced
the fire that from the water restores to us
the outrageous horizon of course
a child will half-open the door. . .
la nuit en feu la nuit déliée le songe forcé
le feu qui de l’eau nous redonne
l’horizon outrageux bien sûr
un enfant entr’ouvrira la porte…
i, laminaria. . .
poems
moi, laminaire…
poèmes
The collection i, laminaria. . . resulted from two sets of contingencies: the death of Wifredo Lam, who collaborated with Césaire on the series of engravings entitled Annonciation that Giorgio Upiglio published in Milan in 1982 (CDP); and the intervention of Daniel Maximin, who proposed collecting Césaire’s work of the previous twenty years as a poetic testament. After trying out several versions of the title “Gradient,” Césaire abandoned it in favor of moi, laminaire. . ., which Maximin glossed as “the assimilation of the poet and the man he was to the laminarian alga” (MFV, 150). Several ms. versions of the fifty-three numbered poems point to an organization different from the one finally adopted. (In our notes on the poems, we have included in square brackets after each title the number found on the set of thirteen manuscripts and typescripts in the Kesteloot collection of the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet.) According to Maximin, on reading the first proofs, Césaire “applied himself to meticulously changing a line or a word here and there. Once all the poems were well arranged by number, he finally decided that it would, however, be preferable to assign a title to each one” (ibid.). Thus, the poems’ titles did not precede, but followed, the organization of the collection. Likewise, the systematic use of lower-case fonts in the titles and the text of most poems was a belated decision, as the earlier versions show.1 Taken together, these choices testify to a scaling back of the poet’s persona as Césaire prepared what he intended in 1982 to be his final poetic statement. With respect to the heroic vision of negritude we find in Solar Throat Slashed, Césaire expressed his disillusionment in “mangrove”: “it is not always a good idea to lose oneself / in gnoseological contemplation / at the most fruitful hollow of genealogical trees.”
When Miguel Angel Asturias disappeared is both an individual poem and a division of the collection, placed between the fifty-three numbered poems and the Wifredo Lam division. Césaire first memorialized the Guatemalan poet-diplomat (1908–74) in Senghor’s magazine Éthiopiques (January 1976). It is therefore safe to place the date of composition between 1974 and late 1975, although no draft of the poem has been found; it was included in “Noria” in 1976.
Wifredo Lam is the last of the three internal divisions of i, laminaria. . . . It draws together works from several sources: the poem “Wifredo Lam” was published in “Noria” in 1976; seven poems written to “illustrate” as many engravings in Lam’s limited-edition portfolio Annonciation (1982); an epigraphic prose that suggests Lam’s godmother initiated him into santería; and a “conversation” that fills in that relationship as Césaire imagined it.
* * *
1. The presence of some interior punctuation followed by capitalization testifies to the belatedness of the decision to use lower case letters more or less systematically.
i, laminaria. . .
moi, laminaire…
Non-time imposes on time the tyranny of its spatiality: in every life there is a north and a south, and the orient and the occident. At the extreme limit or, at the least, at the crossroads, as one’s eyes fly over the seasons, there is the unequal struggle of life and death, of fervor and lucidity, albeit one of despair and collapse, the strength as well to face tomorrow. So goes every life. So goes this book, between sun and shadow, between mountain and mangrove, between dawn and dusk, stumbling and binary.
Le non-temps impose au temps la tyrannie de sa spatialité : dans toute vie il y a un nord et un sud, et l’orient et l’occident. Au plus extrême, ou, pour le moins, au carrefour, c’est au fil des saisons survolées, l’inégale lutte de la vie et de la mort, de la ferveur et de la lucidité, fût-ce celle du désespoir et de la retombée, la force aussi toujours de regarder demain. Ainsi va toute vie. Ainsi va ce livre, entre soleil et ombre, entre montagne et mangrove, entre chien et loup, claudiquant et binaire.
Time also to settle the score with several fantasies and a few phantoms.
Le temps aussi de régler leur compte à quelques fantasmes et à quelques fantômes.
1
lagoonal calendar
calendrier lagunaire
i inhabit a sacred wound
i inhabit imaginary ancestors
i inhabit an obscure will
i inhabit a long silence
i inhabit an irremediable thirst
j’habite une blessure sacrée
j’habite des ancêtres imaginaires
j’hab
ite un vouloir obscur
j’habite un long silence
j’habite une soif irrémediable
i inhabit a thousand-year voyage
i inhabit a three-hundred-year war
i inhabit a secularized cult
between bulb and bulbil i inhabit the untapped space
i inhabit not a flow of basalt
j’habite un voyage de mille ans
j’habite une guerre de trois cents ans
j’habite un culte désaffecté
entre bulbe et caïeu j’habite l’espace inexploité
j’habite du basalte non une coulée
but the tidal wave of the lava
that runs back up the gulch at full speed
and burns all the mosques
i do the best i can with this avatar
of an absurdly botched version of paradise
mais de la lave le mascaret
qui remonte la valleuse à toute allure
et brûle toutes les mosquées
je m’accommode de mon mieux de cet avatar
d’une version du paradis absurdement ratée
— it is much worse than a hell —
i inhabit from time to time one of my sores
each minute i change apartments
and all peace frightens me
– c’est bien pire qu’un enfer –
j’habite de temps en temps une de mes plaies
chaque minute je change d’appartement
et toute paix m’effraie
fiery whirlwind
ascidium like no other for dust
of wayward worlds
a volcano having spat out my freshwater entrails
i remain with my loaves of words and my secret minerals
tourbillon de feu
ascidie comme nulle autre pour poussières
de mondes égarés
ayant craché volcan mes entrailles d’eau vive
je reste avec mes pains de mots et mes minerais secrets
i inhabit therefore a vast thought
but most often i prefer to confine myself
to the littlest of my ideas
or again i inhabit a magic formula
only its opening words
j’habite donc une vaste pensée
mais le plus souvent je préfère me confiner
dans la plus petite de mes idées
ou bien j’habite une formule magique
les seuls premiers mots
all the rest being forgotten
i inhabit the ice block
i inhabit the debacle
i inhabit the surface of a great disaster
i inhabit most often the driest udder
tout le reste étant oublié
j’habite l’embâcle
j’habite la débâcle
j’habite le pan d’un grand désastre
j’habite le plus souvent je pis le plus sec
of the skinniest piton—the she-wolf of these clouds—
i inhabit the halo of the cactaceae
i inhabit a flock of goats pulling on the teat
of the most desolate argan tree
truth to tell i no longer know my precise address
bathyal or abyssal
i inhabit the octopus hole
i fight with an octopus over an octopus hole
du piton le plus efflanqué – la louve de ces nuages –
j’habite l’auréole des cactacées
j’habite un troupeau de chèvres tirant sur la tétine
de l’arganier le plus désolé
à vrai dire je ne sais plus mon adresse exacte
bathyale et abyssale
j’habite le trou des poulpes
je me bats avec un poulpe pour un trou de poulpe
brother drop it
wrack rubbish
hooking myself on like devil’s guts
or uncoiling like a porana
it’s all the same
and whether the wave rolls
or the sun suctions
or the wind flogs
sculpture in the round of my nothingness
frère n’insistez pas
vrac de varech
m’accrochant en cuscute
ou me déployant en porana
c’est tout un
et que le flot roule
et que ventouse le soleil
et que flagelle le vent
ronde bosse de mon néant
the atmospheric pressure or rather the historic
immeasurably increases my pains
even as it renders sumptuous certain of my words
la pression atmosphérique ou plutôt l’historique
agrandit démesurément mes maux
même si elle rend somptueux certains de mes mots
2
annunciations
annonciades
the good news shall have been brought to me through the throng of yellow and red stars in bloom for the first time by a flight of drunken fillies
la bonne nouvelle m’aura été portée à travers la cohue d’astres jaunes et rouges en fleurs pour la première fois par une volée de pouliches ivres
they tell me that the stick insects have been converted to foliage and accept to organize themselves as autonomous forests
that white smoke rises from the council of grackles to announce that in the darkest zones of the heavens skylights have been lit
elles me disent que les phasmes se sont convertis en feuillage et acceptent de se constituer en forêts autonomes
qu’une fumée blanche monte du concile des quiscales pour annoncer que dans les zones les plus sombres du ciel des lucarnes se sont allumées
that the current has been connected between the superfine sun and the collaret of salamanders keeping watch over tunnels
that rust fell like hail liberating a whole unforeseen of butterflies
que le courant a été établi depuis le surfin du soleil jusqu’à la collerette des salamandres montant la garde aux tunnels
que la rouille est tombée en grêle libérant tout un imprévu de papillons
that manatees covered with precious stones
climb back up the banks
that the entire ceremony in short has been punctuated by the solemn firing of the volcanoes installing on their own authority lakes in their craters
growings my mad surge
leafings my just dwelling
que les lamantins couverts de pierreries
remontent les berges
que toute la cérémonie enfin a été ponctuée par le tir solennel des volcans installant de plein droit des lacs dans leur cratère
poussants mon fol élan
feuillants ma juste demeure
roots my survival
a drop of blood rises from the depths
by itself tilts the landscape
and at the summit of the world
fascinates
an irreducible memory
racines ma survie
une goutte de sang monte du fond
seule incline le paysage
et au faîte du monde
fascine
une mémoire irréductible
3
epacts. . .
épactes…
the hill with a limp gesture scattered dust
over the confines of bitter mangroves.
Immediately the quicksanding: i could hear it clacking
its beak and settling more silently
into the scandal of its mandibles.
la colline d’un geste mou saupoudrait
les confins des mangroves amères.
Aussitôt l’enlisement : je l’entendais claquer
du bec et reposer plus silencieusement
dans le scandale de ses mandibules.
A complicity installed its slime in a remorse
of leeches and roots.
Too quickly did they malign dragons: from time to time
one emerges from the muck,
> shaking its wings sprinkling its surroundings and hardly
Une complicité installait sa bave dans un remords
de sangsues et de racines.
On a tôt fait de médire des dragons : de temps en temps
l’un d’eux sort de la gadoue,
secouant ses ailes arrosant les entours et le temps
had it dispersed barques and hookers than it retreats
to the open sea in a dream of monsoons.
If unbeknownst to myself i walk choking on childhoods
let it be clear to all that calculating the epacts
i’ve always refused the pact with this lagoonal calendar
de disperser barques et hourques se retire
au large dans un songe de moussons.
Si de moi-même insu je marche suffocant d’enfances
qu’il soit clair pour tous que calculant les épactes
j’ai toujours refusé le pacte de ce calendrier lagunaire
4
Léon G. Damas somber fire always. . . (in memoriam)
Léon G. Damas feu sombre toujours… (in memoriam)
promises that burst into tiny rockets
The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire Page 52