Venice masks

Wednesday, 12 January 2022

Cannibal - Léon Laleau

This savage wish on certain days
To mingle blows and blood
With love's motions,
To feel beneath the bites
That make the kisses last,
The sobbing of the loved one, and her pain:
       Of fierce unquenched desires
              Of my dark forebears
                     Who partook of human flesh!

Léon Laleau (1892 - 1979) Haiti
Translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy
Source: The Negritude poets : an anthology of translations from the French, Ellen Conroy Kennedy, Viking Press, 1975

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