Page 133 - BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK

94 BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS

Yes, all those are my brothers—a “bitter brotherhood”
imprisons all of us alike. Having stated the minor thesis, I went
overboard after something else.
. . . But those without whom the earth would not be
the earth
Tumescence all the more fruitful
than
the empty land
still more the land
Storehouse to guard and ripen all
on earth that is most earth
My blackness is no stone, its deafness
hurled against the clamor of the day
My blackness is no drop of lifeless water
on the dead eye of the world
My blackness is neither a tower nor a cathedral
It thrusts into the red fl esh of the sun
It thrusts into the burning fl esh of the sky
It hollows through the dense dismay of its own
pillar of patience. 8
Eyah! the tom-tom chatters out the cosmic message. Only the
Negro has the capacity to convey it, to decipher its meaning,
its import. Astride the world, my strong heels spurring into the
fl anks of the world, I stare into the shoulders of the world as the
celebrant stares at the midpoint between the eyes of the sacrifi cial
victim.
But they abandon themselves, possessed, to the essence of all things,
knowing nothing of externals but possessed by the movement of all
things
uncaring to subdue but playing the play of the world
truly the eldest sons of the world
open to all the breaths of the world
meeting-place of all the winds of the world
undrained bed of all the waters of the world

8. Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Paris, Présence Africaine, 1956),
pp. 77–78.

4/7/08 14:16:47
Fanon 01 text 94
Fanon 01 text 94 4/7/08 14:16:47