Every evening, sunset crooks
its thumb across the island
And from the sunset to the thumb
there grows
a path of dead stone
And this peninsula
Still drinks
All the blood of your wandering body
From a tenant farmer’s cup
But when your voice
becomes a chord on the shore’s guitar
And the earth of the face and the face of the earth
Extend the palm of the hand
From the seaward edge of the island
A palm made of bread
You will merge your final hunger
with your first
From above there will come
The faces and prows of not-voyage
So that herbal and mercury
Extract the crosses from your body
The screaming of mothers carries you
now
To the seventh corner
where the island is shipwrecked
where the island celebrates
Your daughter pain
The pain of a woman in childbirth
So that all parting is power in death
all return a child’s learning to spell
No longer do we wait for the cycle
Pulp from good fruit, fruit from good pulp
The earth
breathes in
your green speech
And there before your feet
should be
a tree on a hill
And your hand
should sing
a new moon in my heart
Go and plant
in dead Amilcar’s mouth
This fistful of watercress
And spread from goal to goal
a fresh phonetics
And with the commas of the street
and syllables from door to door
You will sweep away before the night
The roads that go
as far as the night-schools
For all departure means a growing alphabet
for all return is a nation’s language
They await you
the dogs and the piglets
at Chota’s house
grown thin from the warmth of the welcome
They await you
the cups and semantics of taverns
They await you
the beasts
choking on applause and sugarcane
They await you
faces that explode
on the blood of ants
new pastorals to cultivate
But
when your body
of blood and lignite, on heat
Raises
Over the harvest
Your pain
And your orgasm
Who didn’t know
Who doesn’t know
Emigrant
That all of parting is power in death
And all return is a child learning to spell
Corsino Fortes (born 1933) Cape Verde
Translated Daniel Hahn and Sean O'Brien
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