Page 191 - BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK

152 BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS

I give you the chain-gang
I give you the swamp
I give you the Intourist with the three-cornered journey
devour wind
I give you my rugged lips
devour and twist yourself
and twisting clasp me in a greater shiver
embrace me into the fury of us
embrace, embrace US
but biting us as well
into the blood of our blood bitten
embrace, my purity has no bond but your
purity
but then embrace
like a fi eld of measured fi laos
the evening
our many-colored purities
and bind, bind me without remorse
bind me with your great arms to the glowing clay
bind my black vibration to the very navel
of the world
bind, bind me bitter brotherhood
then, strangling me with your lasso of stars
rise, Dove
rise
rise
rise
I follow you who are imprinted on my ancestral
white cornea
rise glutton of the sky
and the vast black hole where I wanted to drown myself
the other moon
there now I want to haul out the evil tongue
of the night in its moveless glaze! 54

54. Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Paris, Présence Africaine, 1956),
pp. 94–96.

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