Postcards from the High Seas
I
Crioula! You will tell the night
guitar and the dawn guitar
how dark you are, how you are engaged
to Lela in Rotterdam
Now you will never go door to door
through the town
selling a thirst for the fresh water
you spill from tin cans
II
In the morning
snow fell on Europe's brow.
The lamp in my hand is a ship
passing through the fjords of Norway
Since yesterday
the ship has faced into rain
steely paralysis
hardened abandonment
the silence gnomic without memory
Since yesterday
the ship a blind landscape of the soul
and your name across the sea
bursts on my palate
sun + tree
III
I have sold Kamoca snacks
on the streets of New York
I have played ouri
on the girders
of skyscrapers
The bones
of our friends were left
in a building in Belfast
Their blood calls
through telephone wires
IV
The ears of the islander hear
the resplendent Olympian sound
of a pestle and mortar
through the streets of Finland
Then I saw Patricians
dressed in togas
speaking Creole
in the forum
Beyond the Pyrenees
there are blacks and there are blacks
in immigrant Germany
the soup countries
are the blacks of Europe
V
Crioula! On Sunday afternoons
with light in the trees
you'll tell the good-natured people
and old cricket players
that one day the names
of Djone
Bana
Morais
Goy
Djosa
Frank
Morgoda
Palaba and Salibana
will be like
white stamps on documents
like passports and free passage
at the embassy doors
VI
Our mouths give evidence
that the soil the drama
emigrate with us under our tongues
our parched knees and elbows
bear witness
in the colony of Cabiri
Along railway tracks
I punch and get punched
by neighbours in high places
over land disputes
and protocol
One night of madness
in the Sacassenje colony
we divided the land
between fruit seeds and fruit trees
between blood and scars
And with foresight I stayed on the border
not letting go of the bolt on my door
VII
Now the road
I see being born: a spring that sees
the shadow of a shoulder blade over the world
beating a drum
with African blood
with European bones
And
every afternoon my thumb returns
and tells the river mouth
I came from Addis Ababa and drank
from the waterfalls at Ruacaná
The literal translation of this poem was made by Daniel Hahn
The final translated version of the poem is by Sean O'Brien
Notes
Creole — Although Portuguese is the official language, Capeverdean Kriolu (Kriolo, Crioulo) is the everyday language in the Cape Verde islands. Kriolu evolved from Portuguese and African languages. As the islands were uninhabited when discovered by the Portuguese, Cape Verdeans do not have various tribal languages like mainland Africa. Most people in Cape Verde are of mixed race, also referred to as Creole.
Cape Verde's islands were probably never as green (verde) as their name suggests. The name refers to their position across the sea from the verdant butt of Senegal, Cap Vert. Even before the time of the Portuguese discovery in 1462 the islands were largely arid.
Lying as they do in the Sahel zone, they are exposed to dry winds from the Sahara for half the year. Between August and September the southwest wind can bring a monsoon, but as Cape Verde is just above the doldrums, where the southwest and northeast tradewinds meet, these rains are not guaranteed. Regular droughts occur when the rains don't come. Overgrazing, deforestation, and the colonizer's neglect, have left the islands even drier and islanders regularly suffered catastrophic famines until the middle of the twentieth century. The regular droughts have led many Cape Verdeans to work as sailors or to emigrate, temporarily or for good. The droughts and emigration are very much a part of everyone's lives.
I
'Crioula': 'Creole girl' is patronising, and 'Creole woman' is stuffy; both are wordy. We wanted to keep the familiarity of this opening address, so we stuck with 'Crioula', allowing the context to illuminate its meaning.
'how dark you are, how you are…': 'That', the staple of prose syntax, is inescapable in poems, but can provide a lifeless link - 'that you are engaged…' gives the reader information that sounds inconsequential. 'How dark you are…', with its suggestion of an exclamation, draws the reader into the song.
'the fresh water / you spill from tin cans': Fortes plays on the sibilance of 'sede' (thirst), doce (fresh), and 'balouça' (sloshes) to accentuate the sensuality of the image. We've settled for a crisper assonance with 'spill from tin cans'; the suggestion of sexual desire is nevertheless maintained in the fluid 'spill'.
II
'hardened abandonment': Fortes plays on the phonetic proximity of 'Aço' (steel) to 'ossos' (bones) in a passage that suggests a dreamlike state of enchantment. We've found an alternative density of sound in the a's, d's and schwas (the 'uh' sound in English) of 'hardened abandonment'.
'bursts on my palate': We've reworked the 'succulent mouth' of the literal, which made for cryptic English, attempting to preserve the sensual desire.
III
'were left': 'Remained' simply refers to the bones and skulls. 'Were left' contrasts the fate of the bones and skulls with the fate of the people who, like the speaker, are still alive. It thus focuses more intensely on the experience of loss.
'their blood calls / through telephone wires': We couldn't find a way of repeating the precision of 'the nostrils of the telephones' without introducing bathos. We transferred the 'nostrils' (or 'mouths' as we would say) of the telephones to the 'wires'. The call of the blood is less insistent, but more lonely and sad, in a form of limbo somewhere on the telephone exchange.
IV
'pestle and mortar': We've specified 'pestle' so that 'mortar' doesn't read as 'artillery'.
'immigrant Germany': We couldn't find a direct synonym of 'immigrated' and so applied 'immigrant' in a slightly alien collocation.
'the soup countries', i.e. the countries of Southern Europe.
V
'with light in the trees': 'Sun on the bushes' sounds like a vision of scrubland in English. The delicacy of 'with light in the trees' feels closer in mood to the vision of 'good-natured people' on a Sunday afternoon.
© Poetry Translation Centre 2004-2010
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