Ode to Guinea

And by the sun installing a power and eagle factory under my skin
and by the wind elaborating the passes it knows best over my power of tooth and salt
and by the black rising along my muscles in sweet sap-like effronteries
and by the woman stretched out like a mountain unsealed and sucked by lianas
the woman with the little known cadastre where day and night play mora for springhead waters and
          rare metals
and by the fire of the woman in which I look for the path to ferns and to Fouta Jallon
and by the closed woman opening on nostalgia

                                                   I HAIL YOU

Guinea whose rains from the curdled height of volacnoes shatter a scarifice of cows for a thousand
           hungers and thirsts of denatured children
Guinea from your cry from your hand from your patience
we still have some arbitrary lands
and when they have me, killed in Ophir perhaps and silenced for good,
out of my teeth out of my skin let them make
a fetish a ferocious guardian against the evil eye
as your solstice shakes me strikes me and devours me
at each one of your steps Guinea
silenced in myself with the astral depth of medusas

Aime Cesaire, Soleil cou-coupe, 1948