THE SUN’S KNIFE-STAB IN THE BACK OF THE SURPRISED CITIES by Aimé Césaire. Translated from the French by A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman And I saw a first animal it had a crocodile body equine feet a dog’s head but when I looked more closely in place of buboes were scars left at different times by storms on a body long subjected to obscure trials its head I told you was that of the hairless dogs one sees prowling around the volcanoes in cities that men have not dared to rebuild and that the souls of the dead haunt for all eternity and I saw a second animal it was lying beneath a dragon tree from both sides of its musk-deer muzzle two pulp-enflamed rostra stood out like mustaches I saw a third animal that was an earthworm but a strange will animated the beast with a long narrowness and it stretched out on the ground ceaselessly losing and growing new rings that one would never have thought it strong enough to bear and that pushed life back and forth among them very fast like an obscene password Thus my word unfolded in a glade of pithy, velvet eyelids over which the fastest falling stars breast-fed their she-asses the motley array exploded surrendered by the veins of a nocturnal giantess oh the house built upon rock the woman ice cube of the bed the catastrophe lost like a needle in a bundle of hay a rain of onyx and of broken seals fell upon a hillock whose name has never been uttered by any priest of any religion and whose effect can only be compared to a star’s whiplashes on a planet’s rump on the left deserting the stars to arrange the vever of their numbers the clouds to anchor in no sea their reefs the black heart crouched in the heart of the storm we built on tomorrow having pocketed the sun’s very violent knife-stab in the back of the surprised cities
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 09:09:00 +0000