I

Crioula [Creole girl or woman]! you will say to the guitar [‘violão’]

Of the night and to the guitar [here ‘viola’ – smaller guitar] of the dawn [or v.v. early morning]

That you are a/the bride [or engaged] and dark (-skinned)

with Lela in Rotterdam

You will never sell in/through the town

From door to door

The thirst of (for) sweet [ie. fresh?] water that swings around [ie. sloshes around]

In tin cans [lit. cans of ‘Flanders leaf’, which is a sort of coated steel – but basically tin cans!]

II

In the morning/s

It snowed on/over the temples [foreheads] of Europe

The lamp of my hand is a ship [but old-fashioned word]

Between the fjords of Norway

Since yesterday

It is raining on/across the prow

Steel that numbs/stupefies

And our bones [sound echoes ‘steel’] of abandon(ment)

gnome of silence without memory

Since yesterday

The ship (normal word now) is a/the landscape of a/the soul without a retina

And your name on/over the sea

sun + tree of juicy mouth

III

I’ve already sold [ie. in the past used to sell] kamoca [sort of maize flour] food [NB ‘food’ in English]

on the streets of New York

I’ve played ourin [strategy game related to Ghanaian ‘oware’] in the beams/girders

of the sky-scrapers being built

In a building in Belfast

There remained bones and skulls

Of contemporaries

The blood still retains/keeps [this ‘retine’ echoes the word ‘retina’ above]

alive

in the nostrils of the telephones

IV

Islander ears heard

The sun-drenched voice in the Olympic throat

Of a mortar [as in pestle, not as in military shell] in the streets of Finland

Then I saw patricians

dressed in togas

Speaking Creole

In the big/great audience chambers

Beyond the Pyrenees

there are blacks and blacks

In immigrated Germany

the countries of soup

V

Crioula [Creole girl/woman]! on Sunday afternoons/evenings

the sun on the bushes

You will say to the faces of good nature

And old cricket players

That the names

Of Djone

Bana

Morais

Goy

Djosa

Frank

Morgoda

Palaba and Salibana

Are used [lit. ‘use themselves’]

as

white stamps on documents

as

passports and free passage [‘free transit’]

To/At the embassies’ door

Our mouths testify

that the ground the drama

Emigrate with us under our tongues

Bear witness to it [words following are the subjects of ‘bear’]

knees and elbows of dryness

of the colony of Cabiri

VII

Along the paths of iron [railway lines]

I give and receive blows

From the neighbours in the government/management

over disputes of land

And norms of culture / cultural norms

In a night of madness

In the colony of Sacassenje

We divided the earth/land

between seeds/pips and trees in fruit

between blood and scars

And I remained foreseeing [ie. with foresight] on/at the border

Grasping/Gripping the lock of my door

VII

Now the road

I watch being born [‘nasce’]: the spring / the Orient [‘nascente’] that is watching

The shade/shadow of the shoulder-blade over the world

Touching [playing?] the drum

with blood of Africa

with bones of Europe

And

Every evening my thumb returns

And says to the mouth of the river

From Addis Ababa I came and I drank

In the cataracts/waterfalls of Ruacaná