Silence - René Maran

My relatives are dead. As for my friends,
My childhood friends, where are they?
Life has scattered them;
Scattered them like seeds blown by the wind.

No Death Can - Patrick Chamoiseau

There are so many oak trees in Atlanta that moan still

Fields that mourn

That also sing

And that imprint upon capsules of cotton unbelievable torsions!

To the Serpent - Aimé Césaire

I have had occasion in the bewilderment of cities to search for the right animal to adore. So I worked my way back to the first times. Undoing cycles untying knots crushing plots removing covers killing hostages I searched.

Promenade of Solitary Death - Edouard Glissant

The sad boy has not moved
On a lake of roses, strewn
With pale bodies in the rosebushes
Funereal bay it has remained

Earthquake - Aimé Césaire

such great stretches of dreamscape
such lines of all too familiar lines
                                         staved in

The Woman and the Flame - Aimé Césaire

A bit of light that descends the springhead of a gaze
twin shadow of the eyelash and the rainbow on a face
and round about
who goes there angelically
ambling