Colours and Shadows by Ahmed Tidjani-Cissé

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The nobility of a colour

to clothe the uncertainty of conditions.

Green-blue turquoise blue

The adornments of nature

scorn the audacities of imitation

they ornament the fleeting hair of the tornado.


Ash grey, dirty grey, iron grey, pearl grey

The metamorphosing power of a colour

which shatters the yokes of comparison.

Sulphur yellow, saffron yellow, golden yellow

Fever can be yellow


Yellow is a self-respecting colour

The yellow of the egg was the beginning

But the respect for a colour is only apparent

when the yellow peril is in question.

Vermilion red, blood red, poppy red

Cardinals’ purple is a red

which sends howling the Gehenna of fear.


The purple of Caesars is all-conquering

Cortez and Pizarro have flaunted the colours of Europe

to the redskins in organizing a hecatomb.

Marxism-Leninism is red


There are colours of poverty

fetishist colours

opulent colours

colours which strike terror or which the whole world unfurls.


Milk white kapok white

The moon is white

Innocence is white

the blindman’s stick is white

the Ku-Klux-Klan is robed in white

my village was evangelized by the White Fathers.


Their words were transmitted with the aid of white cold steel.

To fashion the centuries of history

men have invented all the nuances of a colour.


Black bread, black night, black misery

Mourning is black, the devil is black

with black ebony one can construct

a black market to supply the fields

with cotton of the whitest fibre.


The colours which compose my rainbow

Have the density of shadows.

the borders of my rainbow

history has allowed only a clear obscurity to float.


Like a raging cataract

the dusky shadows of my colour

make a rampart around my house

every time I try to break

the barriers of colour.


Red, blue, yellow, white, black.

The shadows of colours are not truly multicoloured.

Red as palm oil

The snow hides in its own whiteness

behind my door

it will not see me

I have ceased to be the shadow of my colour.

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