The sad boy has not moved
On a lake of roses, strewn
With pale bodies in the rosebushes
Funereal bay it has remained
The shore hesitates the sea passes
The boars are water scourers
Black is the sand, the colour
Is evident in this place
The birds here cloak the murky sky
with the gray of their takeoffs
Such evidence has rendered mad
The first wave run aground
Waves from madness to madness
Pale and wan the others have followed
The rosebushes have kept the alms
Of suicides upon their surplice
The white race of frigate birds
Never comes to these repasts
They go to sound other death knells
Where the wind wears no gloves
Here there moves only the flutter
Of memory and this high cry
That was heard one August noon
On the cliff and its flock
A cry of earth that deploys
The nervures of its foliage
Because love shall have searched it
Or because the rain is pleasing
A cry of woman torn open
At the edge of the fallows
Her nubile breasts divided
Between misery and moss
Cry of deadbolt and cry of osprey
And the people were asleep
The bird of prey makes its nest
Upon the living ash of the tree
And there still loves only milk
Of seaweeds this smell,
Death vivifies death
Funereal bay it has remained
But sad it has not moved
Upon its lake of hatreds, strewn
With pale bodies in the thickets
Who pardon you, O rosebushes.
Edouard Glissant (1928 - 2011) Martinique
Translated by Jeff Humphries with Melissa Manolas
Thank you for this.
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