Portrait by Antoine-Roger Bolamba

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I have my gri-gri

gri-gri

gri-gri

my calm bounding awake

clings to the wavy limbs of the Congo

never a stormy passage for my heart

bombarded with glowing oriflammes

I think of my silver necklace

become a hundred isles of silence

I admire the obstinate patience

of the okapi

bluebird battered in the open sky

what shipwreck

plunges it to the gulf of nothingness

nothingness empty of nightly entreaties

Ah! the broken resolutions

ah! the screaming follies

let my fate fall upon its guardians

they are three villains

I say three in counting 1 2 3

who dim the ancestral mirror

but you fugitive image

I will see you on the height of dizzy anger

wait while I put on my brow my mask of blood

and soon you will see

my tongue flutter like a banner.