I

 

Crioula, you will tell the guitar

Of the night, and the dawn's small guitar

That you are a dark-skinned bride

            with Lela in Rotterdam

 

You'll never sell around the town

            From door to door

The thirst for sweet water that slaps

            In a tin can 

 

II

 

In the morning

It snowed on the temples of Europe

The lamp of my hand is a caravel

          Among the fjords of Norway

 

Since yesterday

It's been raining on the prow

            Steel rain that numbs

Our abandoned bones

            gnomon of silence without memory

 

Since yesterday

The ship is the landscape of a blind soul

And your name upon the ocean

           the sun in a fruit-tree's mouth

 

 III

 

 I used to sell Kamoca

            On the streets of New York

 

I've played ourin among the girders

            Of skyscrapers under construction

 

In a building in Belfast

Remain the skulls and bones

            Of my contemporaries

The blood remains

Alive in the telephones' nostrils

 

IV

 

The ears of the islander heard

The sun-drenched voice in the Olympian throat

Of a pestle in Finland

 

I saw patricians

           clad in togas

Speaking Creole

In vast auditoria

 

           Beyond the Pyrenees

           there are blacks and blacks

Immigrants to Germany

in the soup-making countries

the blacks of Europe

 

V

 

Crioula, on Sunday evenings

            with the sun on the bushes

You will say to the good-natured faces

            Of old cricket-players

That the names

            Of Djone

            Bana

            Morais

            Goy

            Djosa

            Frank

            Morgoda

            Paliba and Salibana

Present themselves

            as

white stamps on documents

            As

            passport and laissez-passer 

 

At the doors of the embassies

 

VI

 

Our mouths testify

            that the earth and the story

Emigrate with us under our tongues

To witness

            the dry knees and elbows

            of the colony of Cabiri

 

Along the chemins-de-fer

I give blows and receive them

From neighbouring governments

over land disputes

            And cultural norms

 

In a night of lunacy

In the colony of Sacassenje

We divided the land

            Between fruit-trees and seeds

            Between blood and scars

 

Having foreseen this I stayed at the border

Gripping the lock of my door

 

VII

 

Now from the road

I watch the birth: the spring that watches

The shade of the shoulder-blades over the world

Striking the drum

            with the blood of Africa

            with the bones of Europe

 

            And

 

Every evening my thumb returns

            And says to the mouth of the river

From Addis Ababa I came and drank

            In the cataracts of Ruacana