The Griffin

I am a memory that does not reach the threshold
and wanders in the limbo where the glint of absinthe
when the heart of night breathes through its blowholes
moves the fallen star in which we contemplate ourselves

The lingual sky took on a new consistency of a freshly opened
coconut's cream

spitting Andes and sacred Mayumba
sole shipwreck that the eye good sailor pays off for us
when soul maddened shredded maddened
through clouds which reach me in tightly shut fish
I reascend to haunt the sinister thickness of things




written by Aime Cesaire
translated into English from French by Clayton Eshleman