Et ta bouche est une syllabe mûre
que seule l'empreinte des mots d'amour
me permet d'embrasser sous tes lèvres,
au cœur même d'un bris d'azur.
Et tu dis OM
à quoi bon suivre une sirène
sans la tendresse de tes mains ?
Et je dis Homme,
qu'à ton chant de chair ma peau égrène
des mots plus doux que tes seins.
OM OM OM
et penser à une femme sur mer
et se faire bercer par tant d'absences.
*
Un coeur altéré par le pays autre
sait que le ciel n'est pas immobile
que l'azur n'est sans mouvement
que pour attendre les étoiles.
Imiter les anges exige geste imperceptible
*
J'ai trouvé le ciel
en retenant mon souffle :
un oiseau coupait le soir
avec ce grand bruit
d'une frêle vague cassée.
*
De coolie il en découle que
je suis Kakhi, couleur poussière
lachkar soldat des vagues,
je suis libellule claire
à tremper mon dos dans l'eau pure,
lascar de l'eau salée !
*
Et la mer a natté les tresses
d'une fée à la tombée de la nuit
Et je tamisai la mer
pour retenir tout le sel.
*
Et la lune
tête lasse
coula à marée basse
dans un crépitement humide
La mer dit cette phrase
qui fit sortir
notre être de son corps ?
*
Je ne reconnais aux cartographes
que ma destination inconnue
mais pas les étoiles pas la chair nue
car mes vertèbres n'ont pas vu la lumière.
Je ne reconnais aux sextants
que ma chair désocéanée du temps
mais pas les vagues pas le vent sec,
car ma bouche mange la mer par son ventre bleu.
de Cale d’étoiles
Khal Torabully
Khal Torabully coined the term “coolitude,” much in the same way that Aimé Césaire developed the concept of negritude, by taking the derogatory term “coolie,” used to describe Mauritians of Asian descent, and re-imagining it to encompass the significance of transcultural exchanges (geographical, biological, and cultural) that enrich the world. He imbues the word “coolie” with honor and dignity, as well as the strength that comes from the mixing of cultures and ethnicities that is more than the sum of its parts. In the poem “[From coolie comes],” Torabully uses water imagery to highlight the rebirth and cleansing of the coolie experience. In addition, to add a playful tension to the disturbing history of the coolies, he makes heavy use of alliteration (repetition of the k sound in French of the first three lines, replicated in the translation).
Khal Torabully is a prize-winning poet, essayist, film director, and semiologist from Mauritius. He writes in French and Mauritian Creole, and has authored some twenty-five books. In 2014, UNESCO officially approved the International Indentured Labour Route Project, and Torabully is a key part of this project, having devised the “poetics of coolitude,” which offers a new paradigm for the encounter of “memories and imaginaries,” which UNESCO has recognized as “vectors of peace.”
Nancy Naomi Carlson has received grants from the NEA, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County. She has authored three books of poetry and four books of translations, including Hammer with No Master (Tupelo Press, 2016), translations of René Char, which was a finalist for the CLMP Firecracker Poetry Award, and The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper (Seagull Books, 2015), translations of Djiboutian poet Abdourahman Waberi, which was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award. Her work has appeared in such journals as APR, Boulevard, The Georgia Review, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. Seagull Books will publish her co-translation of The Dancing Other, a novel by Suzanne Dracius from Martinique, in January 2018, Naming the Dawn by Abdourahman Waberi in the spring, and her second full-length collection of non-translated poems in fall 2018.
