Aime Cesaire - Return to my Native Land

the madness that screams

the madness that sees

the madness that unchains itself

And you know the rest

That 2 and 2 make 5

that the forest mews like a cat

that the tree pulls chestnuts out of the fire

that the sky smoothes its beard

etcetera etcetera …

Who are we and what? Admirable

question!

By looking at trees

I have become a tree

and this tree’s long feet

have dug great hollows of poison in the earth

have dug huge cities of bones

by thinking of the Congo

I have become a Congo noisy with forests

and rivers

where the whip cracks like a great

banner

the banner of the prophet

where the water goes

likwala likwala

where the lightning of anger hurls a green

axe and herds wild boars

of putrefactions into the beautiful violent precincts

of the nostril.

At the end of the small hours the sun that

coughs and spits its lungs out

At the end of the small hours

a little line of sand

a little line of muslin

a little line of maize

At the end of the small hours

a great gallop of pollen

a great gallop of a little line of

little girls

a great gallop of colibris

a great gallop of daggers to plunge

into the earth’s breast.

Angel customs officers who

mount guard by the entrances of the waves

over all that is forbidden

I declare my crimes and say that there is nothing to say in my

defence.

Dances. Idols. Relapses.

I too have murdered

God with my idleness

my words my gestures my obscene songs

I have worn parrot feathers and

musk-cat skins

I have worn down the patience of missionaries

I have insulted the benefactors of humanity.

Defied Tyre. Defied Sydon.

Adored the Zambezi.

The expanse of my perversity confounds me.

Yet why continue to hide

in the impenetrable wild

my beggar’s living zero

Why not, disregarding all lessons in nobility,

strike up

the horrible jumping

of my Bantu ugliness?

voom roh oh

voom roh oh

to charm snakes to conjure up

the dead

voom roh oh

to hold back the rain to cross

the tides

voom roh oh

to stop the shadows turning

voom roh oh to let my own skies

open

— On a road I am a child chewing

a sugar-cane root.

— On a blood road being dragged

I am a man with a rope around my neck.

— Upright in the middle of an immense circus

on my black forehead is a crown of thorn-apple.

Voom roh

Fly away

higher than quivering higher

than witches towards other stars

when no one gives them a thought

the fierce exaltation of forests

and mountains uprooted

islands in chains for a thousand years!

voom roh oh

let the promised time come again

and the bird that knew my name

and the woman who had a thousand names

fountain and sun and tears

and her hair like young fish

and her steps my climates

and her eyes my seasons

days without harm

nights without offence

stars of confiding

wind of complicity

But who lays hands on my voice? who flays

my voice? Stuffing my throat with a thousand bamboo hooks.

A thousand sea-urchin

needles. You filthy remnant of a world.

You filthy small hours. You filthy hate.

It’s you, burden of an insult and a hundred years of

the whip. A hundred years of my

patience, a hundred years of my effort

simply not to die.

Roh oh

we sing of poisonous flowers

bursting in meadows of fury;

skies of love struck by clots of blood;

epileptic mornings; the white

burning of abyssal sands, the sinking

of wrecked ships in the middle of nights rent by

the smell of wild beasts.

What can I do?

I must begin.

Begin what?

The only thing in the world that’s worth beginning:

The End of the World, no less.

Flan

o flan of the appalling autumn

where new steel grows and undying

concrete

flan o flan

where the air rusts in great patches of

evil laughter

where water which is pus slashes

at the great cheeks of the sun

I hate you

Women are still seen with madras cloth

round their loins rings in their ears

smiles on their mouths babies

at their breast and all the rest of it:

ENOUGH OF THIS OUTRAGE!

Now for the great defiance

diabolical impulses

the insolent

nostalgic drift of red moons

green lights and yellow fevers!

Twenty times over

in the tepid warmth of your throat

you will develop and entertain the same poor

comfort that we are no more than

mutterers of words

and you do it in vain.

Words? We are handling

quarters of the world, we are marrying

delirious continents, we are breaking down

steaming doors,

words, ah yes, words! but

words of fresh blood, words which are

tidal waves and erysipelas

malarias and lavas and bush-fires,

and burning flesh

and burning cities …

Know this well:

I never play except at the millennium

I never play except at the Great Fear

Accommodate yourself to me. I won’t

accommodate myself to you!

I have been seen snatching,

with a grand gesture of the brain,

a cloud that is too red

or a caress of rain,

or a prelude of wind,

yet do not be unduly reassured:

I break open the yolk-bag

that separates me from myself

I force the great waters that gird me with blood.

I and nobody else reserve my place

on the last train

of the last tidal wave.

I and nobody else give tongue

to the last anguish

I and I alone

procure for myself with a flute

the first drops of virginal milk!

And now to be done

with the sun (it is not strong enough to go

to my strong head)

with the floury night laying its golden

eggs of uncertain fireflies

with the shock of hair trembling at the cliff-top

where the winds leap like troops of salty shifting horses

Exoticism, my pulse tells me, is no fit food

As I leave Europe

the irritation of its own cries

the silent currents of despair

as I leave timid Europe

who can only find its feet in boasts

I wish for that egoism which is beautiful

which runs risks

and my ploughing reminds me of a ship’s relentless prow.

How much blood there is in my memory. In my memory are

lagoons.

They are covered with death’s heads. They are not covered with

water lilies.

In my memory are lagoons. On their banks no women’s

loincloths are laid out.

My memory is surrounded by blood. My memory

has its belt of corpses.

A volley of rum warmly lacing

our wretched revolts, sweet eyes swooning

drunk with a drink of ferocious liberty

(niggers-are-all-the-same, I tell you

they-have-every-vice-every-conceivable-vice, I’m telling you that

nigger-smell-makes-the-cane-grow

it’s like the old saying:

beat-a-nigger-and-you-feed-a-nigger)

among the rocking chairs

with my mind upon the voluptuous horse-whip

I go back and forth, an unappeased foal

Or else quite simply how they love us!

Gay and obscene, and to be rid of boredom, very hot on jazz.