Dance to the Amulets by Tchicaya U Tam’si

Also Read

Come over here

our grass is rich

come you fawns

gestures and stabs of sickly hands

curving then unripping of conception

one – who? – you shape my fate

come you fawns

over here the suppleness of mornings

and the blood masked here

and the rainbow-coloured dream the rope at the neck

come over here

our grass is rich here

my first coming

was the harsh explosion of a flint

solitude

my mother promised me to light.

A poem from Feu de brousse (1957)