Pilgrimage to Loango Strand by Jean-Baptiste Tati-Loutard

Also Read

I have followed to this strand the scent of their blood

Of my blood

Forgetting other scars burnt by the hard wind

In days gone by; here I’ll stop:

Life sickens me; I will go no further.

Even the path falters before the memory-post

Of an embarcation.

The sea still describes infinity

To this harbour, rocking its pendulum

Through three centuries;

And God’s spirit still circles above the waters

Of this great flat silence

Pecked by the voyaging gulls.

I shall not continue my pilgrimage

Over the submarine roadway paved with bones

Until the distant resurgence of Jamestown

Amid the camps of death flowered with cotton.

Let noble Africa raise its own cenotaphs

For the repose of those heavy-hearted dead

Who went spilling their bitterness

Over the spume of the waves.