RETURN TO THE CHOICE OF PORTS

Salimata the African girl

I never forgot
little flower of Burkina Faso



I never forgot
your fragile and high body of ebony
protect with a booboo of thousand tattoos
driving through the colorful crowds
hipping towards me like a cobra
to depose this passionate kiss
on my extasiate lips

I never forgot
in this assieged airport
this eternal departure
leaving behind us
an incomplete adventure
full of impossible dreams
and of unavoidable desires



I never forgot
this kiss to the white man
this defiance to the black man
this rejection of insignificance
this protest of your heart
woman of less Africa

Your will never forget
this traveler from America
diverted to your islands of Africa
of cries of easy laughs
of sufferings of useless deaths
of dramas of futile wars
your luminous laugh melt into my vain



Who could ever forget

the meaning of Africa
the slenderness of the male
the sun that melt your forehead
the dust that feed your throats
the Sahel, useless otherwise than
...............to pick up all black, a flower

I will never forget
your eyes those little precious stars
your breasts those impenetrable masks
your hips those nervous gyroscopes
your lips those thirsty oasis
your dreams those infinite desires
of whom my only dreams have still access



Who could ever forget

your beauty of black virgin
your eyes of avid glances
your mouth of naive sentences
your hands of deep caresses
your nose of petrified agaves
your breast of frightened mountains
your pubis of incisive sculptures
which my only dreams still have the key

Who could forget

I did not forget
in this sleeping Ouagadougou
our walk in the dark
through those middling avenues
on the plaza of the revolution
where your brothers died for nothing
the nails of your fingers penetrates my fragile flesh



I will not forget
in Paris the luminous
your body transplanted by my dreams
searching around for foolish escapes
breaking the eternal fortresses
running through the eager glances
your hand hanged to my dream of fragile man

I will never forget
Africa in peril
the men, careless
the children, in distress
the woman, out of breath
if I should save Africa
I would only do it for you woman of less Africa



I will never forget you
little black flower of Burkina Faso

RETURN TO THE CHOICE OF PORTS

---

the sea to drink

sea to drink
sea to drink in a glass
drink the sea
a glass of sea to drink
sea of thirsty
I am thirsty

....

in the belly of shores
the sands break through my picture
the fine grain maltreat my horizon

I will go on watery mornings
sculpt your fingers of argyle
in the solid rock



I will go on gray mornings
run through the terrible wave
over the blood of my island



come with me
little box of girl
your fingers in my bag of asylum
come and invade my island

come with me
little thirst of girl
your foot of satin, fragile
hang over my dream of argyle



come with me
the sea at the edge of suicide
come at the edge of my island
come and rape my island

---

RETURN TO THE CHOICE OF PORTS

---

the pottery hand

The pottery hand of tired war



to the heart


I keep my fingers to the wounds of my bed

the comets of Satan sharpen their tyrants

.

night



night of sicken planets

planets blown out

they destroy our pedestal of friendship


misery



the sweeper collect the hearts
the sweeper leave and cry
the waterer suicide himself in her blood
how dirty was the wall
the wall of scull on day-break
the canon bell to the churches of sounds
the dagger host to the Jesus anathema

---

RETURN TO THE CHOICE OF PORTS

---

a prison for your dreams

I will put your images on a box
and I will waken their dreams
their dreams of cripple palaces
I will put you in a box of dreams
I will put your faces on that box
and my fingers of tiredness also
and all the day-break that are born
I will put them into the closed box
I will put your eyes into a box
in a box of obscurity anywhere

and many seas in your closed eyes
in a box of infinite seas
I will put your charms in this box
in this box of impenetrable paradises
odors of kisses of paper
papers exhausted at the cries of joy
I will put everything in a closed box
I will put everything in a hidden box
I will put everything in a box of imagination
and I will imagine that there is only one box for us

---

RETURN TO THE CHOICE OF PORTS

---

your youth of yesterday

In the color of moons
the freshness wakes you up
to the sleep of nights in dampness.



Comforted by love in silence
we ran, distracted in the foliage
among the strings of dawn
on the slope of laughs
until the morning of sonorous suns.

You hang yourself to my legs
your fingers of naive little queen,
and your eyes in the humidity
of charming desires of dreams.



We stayed there until our twenties
near the stream of candor.



The waters between your legs flows
their naive and silent youth.

We have lost our twenties
and you mirrored yourself over the waves,
what was no more of your youth.



I leave you there under the stream
and I lived young elsewhere
near another stream that flows
between other legs of youth.

Marco Polo or the imaginary journey (poetry: translated from rêves de femmes, 1998) © 1996 Jean-Pierre Lapointe

---

RETURN TO THE CHOICE OF PORTS

---