Aime Cesaire - Return to my Native Land

this once defiant soul

moulting in the ancestral mud-pit.

I say that it is well so.

My back shall make a victory out of its whipping sores.

I shall trim my natural obsequiousness with acknowledgements

of gratitude

and my enthusiasm will outclass the silver-braided flummery of

that postillion in Havana, lyrical baboon, pimp of the

splendours of servitude.

I say that this is well.

I live for the greater flatness of my soul

for the greater limpness of my flesh.

Warm small hours of ancestral heat and fear

I tremble now as we all tremble when our submissive blood

sings in the madrepore.

Look at the tadpoles of my prodigious ancestry hatched inside me!

Those who invented neither gunpowder nor compass

those who tamed neither steam nor electricity

those who explored neither sea nor sky

but those who know the humblest corners of the country of suffering

those whose only journeys were uprootings

those who went to sleep on their knees

those who were domesticated and christianized

those who were inoculated with degeneration

tom-toms of empty hands

inane tom-toms of resounding wounds

burlesque tom-toms of emaciated treachery

Warm small hours of ancestral heat and fears

jettison my pilgrim wealth and

my authentic lies

But what strange pride suddenly fires me?

come colibri

come sparrow-hawk

come horizon-crack

come dog-faced baboon

come dolphins

a pearl-bearing revolt breaking the shell of the sea

come plunge of islands

come days of dead fish disintegrating

in quicklime of birds of prey

come ovaries of water where the future moves its little heads

come wolves who gaze in the savage orifices

of the body

when my moon meets your sun at the ecliptic inn

Beneath my uvula’s reserve

wild boars lair

Under the grey stone of daylight

your eyes

a quivering conglomerate of ladybirds

Within the gaze of disorder

swallow of mint and broom melts

to be born again in the tidal wave of your light

(O lullaby my words

the child who does not know

the map of spring has always to be drawn again)

grasses will swing for the cattle

sweet vessel of hope

alcoholic swell of the sea

the sharpened stones of the never-seen rings

will cut the stalks of the glass organ of evening

strewing zinnias

and coryanthes

over the ultimate width of my fatigue

and you, from the foundation of your light,

choose, star, to draw like a lemur

from the unfathomable sperm of man

the undared form

which the quivering womb carries like an ore!

o well-disposed light

o fresh source of light

those who invented neither gunpowder nor compass

those who tamed neither steam nor electricity

those who explored neither sea nor sky

but without whom the earth would not be the earth

We the hump growing more benign

as more and more the earth abandons its own

we the silo

storing to ripen

all of the earth that belongs most to the earth

my negritude is not a stone,

nor deafness flung out against the clamour of the day

my negritude is not a speck of dead water

on the dead eye of the earth

my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral

it plunges into the red flesh of the soil

it plunges into the blazing flesh of the sky

my negritude riddles with holes

the dense affliction of its worthy patience.

Heia for the royal Kailcedrate!

Heia for those who have never invented anything

those who never explored anything

those who never tamed anything

those who give themselves up to the essence of all things

ignorant of surfaces but struck by the movement of all things

free of the desire to tame but familiar with the play of the world

truly the eldest sons of the world

open to all the breaths of the world

fraternal territory of all breaths

undrained beds of the waters of the world

flesh of the flesh of the world pumping with the very movement of the world

Warm small hours of ancestral virtues

Blood! Blood! all our blood roused by the male heart of the sun

those who know the femininity of the moon with her body of oil

the rapture of reconciliation between antelope and star

those who continue to live in the germination of grass!

Heia perfect circle of the world and the fitness of agreement!

Listen to the white world

appallingly weary from its immense effort

the crack of its joints rebelling under the hardness of the stars

listen to the proclaimed victories which trumpet their defeats

listen to their grandiose alibis (stumbling so lamely)

Pity for our conquerors, all-knowing and naïve!

Heia for the reincarnation of tears and the worst pain brought back again

those who never invented anything

those who never tamed anything

Heia for joy

heia for love

heia for the reincarnation of tears and the worst pain brought back again

And here at the end of the small hours is my virile prayer

that I may hear neither laughter nor crying, my eyes

upon this city which I prophesy as beautiful.

Give me the sorcerer’s savage faith

give my hands the power to mould

give my soul the temper of the sword

I will stand firm. Make of my head a prow

and of myself make neither a father

nor a brother nor a son

but the father, the brother, the son

do not make me a husband, but the lover of this unique people

Make me rebellious against all vanity but docile to its genius

like the fist of our extended arm!

Make me the steward of its blood

make me the trustee of its rancour

make me a man of ending

make me a man of beginning

make me a man of harvesting

but also make me a man of sowing

make of me its executioner

the time has come to gird my loins like a man of courage—

But at the execution let my heart preserve me from all hate

do not make of me that man of hate for whom I have only hate

I was born of this unique race

yet knowing my tyrannical love you know

it is not by hatred of other races that I prosecute for mine.

All that I would wish is

to answer the universal hunger

the universal thirst

to prescribe at last this unique race free

to produce from its tight intimacies the succulence of fruit

Look. The tree of our hands is for all!

It is converting the wounds which were cut in its trunk

the soil works

and among the branches heady sweet blossoms of haste

But before I set foot in these future orchards

let me deserve them on the encircling sea

give me my heart while waiting for land

on the sterile ocean

where the taut sail promises and soothes

on the changeable ocean

give me the obstinacy of the proud canoe

and its seafaring power

Here advancing, climbing and falling on the pulverized tide,

here dancing the sacred dance in front of the greyness of the town

here roaring out a vertiginous lambi

galloping the lambi all the way to the irresolute Heights

Strongly with a plough stroke twenty times repeated

the paddle divides the water

the canoe jibs at the force of the blade