Aime Cesaire - Return to my Native Land

He was a very good nigger.

Misery beat him front and back, they shoved into his brain the idea that he could never trick his own oppressive fate, that he had no power over his own destiny; that an unkind Lord had for all eternity written prohibitions into the nature of his pelvis. To be a good nigger he must believe honestly in his unworthiness and never feel any perverse curiosity to check those fateful hieroglyphics.

He was a very good nigger

and it did not occur to him that he might ever hoe and dig and cut anything except the insipid cane.

He was a very good nigger.

And they threw stones at him, bits of scrap iron,

broken bottle ends, but neither these stones

nor this iron nor those bottles …

O quiet years of God on this clod of an earth

and the whip argued with the swarming flies over the sweet dew of our wounds.

I say Hurrah! more and more the old negritude

is turning into a corpse

the undone horizon is pushed back and stretched

Between the torn clouds a sign by lightning:

the slave-ship is splitting open … Its belly in spasm ringing with noises.

The cargo of this bastard suckling of the seas is gnawing at its bowels like an atrocious tapeworm

Nothing can drown the threat of its growling intestines

in vain the joy of the sails filled out like a purse full of doubloons

in vain the tricks allowed by the fatal stupidity of the police frigates

in vain does the captain have the most troublesome

nigger hanged from the yard-arm, or thrown

overboard, or fed to his mastiffs.

In their spilt blood

the niggers smelling of fried onion

find the bitter taste of freedom

and they are on their feet the niggers

the sitting-down niggers

unexpectedly on their feet

on their feet in the hold

on their feet in the cabins

on their feet on deck

on their feet in the wind

on their feet beneath the sun

on their feet in blood

on their feet

and

free

on their feet and in no way distraught

free at sea and owning nothing

veering and utterly adrift

surprisingly

on their feet

on their feet in the rigging

on their feet at the helm

on their feet at the compass

on their feet before the map

on their feet beneath the stars

on their feet

and

free

and the cleansed ship advances fearless upon the caving waters

Gobs of our shame rot away.

By the belling sea at noon

by the sun in the bud at midnight

to the sparrow-hawk who holds the keys of the east I speak

by the disarmed day

by the stone’s throw of rain

to the squall who keeps watch in the west I speak

to the white dog of the north, to the black snake of the south

I speak to the two who complete the girdle of the sky

to cross one more sea

oh one more sea to cross

so that I may invent my lungs

so that the prince may be silent

so that the queen may make love to me

to kill one more old man

to set free one more madman

so that my soul may shine bark shine

bark bark bark

so that the owl may hoot, my lovely curious angel.

The master of laughter?

The master of fearful silence?

The master of hope and despair?

The master of idleness? The master of dance?

It is I!

and for this, O Lord,

men with weak necks are accorded

deadly triangular calm

But for me my dances

my bad nigger dances

the breaking-the-yoke dance

the jailbreak dance

the it-is-beautiful-and-good-and-lawful-to-be-a-Negro dance

for me my dances and may the sun bounce on the racquet of my hands

no, the unequal sun is no longer sufficient

let me address the wind

Wrap yourself around my new growth

lie on my measured fingers

I give you my conscience and its beat of flesh

I give you the fires which grill my weakness

I give you the chain-gang

I give you the marsh

I give you the Intourist of the triangular circuit

wind consume

I give you my quick words

consume and wrap

and as you wrap kiss me with a violent trembling

kiss me until I am the furious WE

kiss, kiss US

but also bite

bite to draw blood from our blood!

kiss, my purity is bound to yours alone

but then kiss

like a field of just filaos

in the evening

our variegated purities

bind me, bind me without remorse

bind me with your vast arms to the luminous clay

bind my black resonance to the very navel of the world

bind me, bind me, bitter fraternity

strangle me with your lasso of stars, then rise

Dove

rise

rise

rise

It is you I follow, follow

stamped on my eye’s ancestral white cornea

Rise licker of the sky

and the great black

hole where I wished to drown myself by another moon

it is there that I would fish

for the night’s evil tongue in its seized swirl!

Peter de Francia (1921–2012) loved charcoal, for “the wonderful way you go between tone and line” and its adaptability, essential for these crowded, complex drawings. They encompass the whole microcosm of Césaire’s island, from the visceral squalor of the shanty town to an underlying nobility of vision. The revolutionary protest, surrealist imagery, and close description of the text are well matched by de Francia’s monumental, charged visual language.

This series dates from 1977–79. The first two were included in the 1977 retrospective at the Camden Arts Centre, London, and New 57 Gallery, Edinburgh; more were shown at the Institute of Cultural Relations, 1978, and since.

The frontispiece is an original work by John Berger.