Tag: Aime Cesaire poem

“The Woman and The Flame” by Aimé Césaire

On By Dr. Y.In Great Moments, Great PeopleLeave a comment
Aime Cesaire
Aimé Césaire

It is no secret that Aimé Césaire, the father of the Négritude movement, was a prolific author and poet. He published over 100 poems, each one more unique than the other. Césaire was not only responsible for  Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, a widely acclaimed masterpiece read throughout schools in Africa today, which documented the 20th-century colonial condition, but he was also an accomplished playwright. In what Césaire describes as his “triptych” of plays, La Tragédie du roi Christophe (The Tragedy of King Christophe, another one read in schools), Une Saison au Congo (A Season in the Congo, another masterpiece), and Une Tempête (The Tempest), he explores a series of related themes, especially the efforts of Blacks—whether in Africa, the United States, or the Caribbean—to resist the powers of colonial domination. Like his poetry and polemical essays, Césaire’s plays explore the paradox of Black identity under French colonial rule.

The poem below “The Woman and The Flame” by Aimé Césaire, Solar Throat Slashed: The Unexpurgated 1948 Edition, is from published by Wesleyan University Press, and translated to English by Clayton Eshleman. Enjoy!

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African Venus, a sculpture by Charles-Henri Joseph Cordier 1851 (Source: Walters Art Museum)
African Venus, a sculpture by Charles-Henri Joseph Cordier 1851 (Source: Walters Art Museum)

“The Woman and the Flame” by Aimé Césaire

A bit of light that descends the springhead of a gaze
twin shadow of the eyelash and the rainbow on a face
and round about
who goes there angelically
ambling
Woman the current weather
the current weather matters little to me
my life is always ahead of a hurricane
you are the morning that swoops down on the lamp a night stone
between its teeth
you are the passage of seabirds as well
you who are the wind through the salty ipomeas of consciousness
insinuating yourself from another world
Woman
you are a dragon whose lovely color is dispersed and darkens so
as to constitute the
inevitable tenor of things
I am used to brush fires
I am used to ashen bush rats and the bronze ibis of the flame
Woman binder of the foresail gorgeous ghost
helmet of algae of eucalyptus
dawn isn’t it
and in the abandon of the ribbands
very savory swimmer

“Scalp” de Aimé Césaire

On By Dr. Y.In Great LiteratureLeave a comment
Aime Cesaire
Aime Cesaire

I am posting here, a poem by the great poet founder of the negritude movement, the Francophone poet Aimé Césaire from Martinique.  The breadth of Césaire’s work is amazing.  He has published over 100 poems.  The poem “Scalp” is one of them.  Enjoy!

SCALP

Il est minuit

les sorciers ne sont pas encore venus

les montagnes n’ont pas fondu

ai-je assez dit à la terre

de ne pas s’installer par crainte de l’insolation?

Me serrerai-je la gorge avec une corde faite du lierre de mes murmures?

poissons cueilleuses de l’eau et son réceptacle

c’est par-dessus vos têtes que je parle

comme les étoiles dans la bave du miel de ses mauvais rêves et la terre elle a enfanté sous nous

C’est vrai que j’ai laissé mes ongles

en pleine chair de cyclone

parmi le fracas des hannetons gros et jusqu’à faire jaillir le jaune neuf d’un sperme me jetant sous son ventre pour mesurer mon rut

Maintenant

par le sang dur du viol

entre deux criminels

je sais l’heure celui

qui meurt

celui qui s’en va

Mais un mais moi

enserré dans la touffe qui m’endort

et par la grâce des chiens

sous le vent innocent et déplisseur des lianes

héros de chasse casqué d’un oiseau d’or

 

 SCALP

It is midnight

the sorcerers have not yet come

the mountains have not melted

have I sufficiently told the earth

not to set itself up in fear of sunstroke?

Shall I tighten my throat with a cord made from the ivy of my mutterings?

fish gatherers of water and its receptacle

it is above your heads that I speak

like the stars in the honey drool from my bad dreams and the earth it has birthed beneath us

It is true that I left my fingernails

full in the flesh of the cyclone

amongst the brawl of huge cockchafers even to making spurt a new yellow semen throwing myself under its belly to measure my rutting

Now

by the hard blood of rape

between two criminals

I know the hour

he who dies

he who leaves

But one but I

enclosed in the tuft that benumbs me

and by the grace of dogs

beneath the innocent and liana-unpleating wind

a hero of the hunt helmeted with a golden bird