I am whatever you think a black man is. You almost never think about black men. I will always be what you want a black man to be. I am your black man. I’ll never be only your black man. I am my black man before I am yours. Your black man. A black man is always somebody’s black man. Or they are not a black man at all, but a man. Just a man. When they say that a man is black, what they mean is that he is more black than he is man. But all the same, I’m a black man to you. I’m what you imagine black men to be. I can spill onto your whiteness the blackness that defines a black man in the eyes of someone who is not black. The black man is the invention of the white man. It is believed that to the white man falls the burden of creating all that is good in the world, and that I am good, and that I was created by whites. That they fear me more than they fear other white people. That they fear me, but at the same time desire my forbidden body. That they would scalp me for the doomed love they bear for my blackness. I was not born black. I’m not black every moment of the day. I am black only when they want me to be black. Those times that I am not just black, I am as adrift as the most lost white person. I am not just what you think I am.
Translated by Dan Hanrahan
The one who
hurls stones
of lightning
against the house
of the meddler.
Leopard,
husband of Ọya.
Leopard,
son of Yemoja.
Shango boils
yams
with the wind
that leaves
his nostrils.
He gives a new name
to the Musulmi.
He is still alive
when they think
he is already dead.
Orisha who kills
the first
and who kills
the twenty-
fifth.
Shango chases down
the Christian
with his cry,
cloud
that overshadows
a corner of the sky.
Leopard
with coruscant gaze,
do not allow
death
to take me
one single day
before my time.
I died how many times
in the longest night?
In the motionless night,
heavy and long,
I died how many times
on the night of calunga?
The night does not end
and here I am
dying again
nameless and again
dying with each
hole opened
in the musculature
of the person I once was.
I died how many times
in the bleeding bruised night?
In the night of calunga
so long and so heavy,
I died how many times
on that terrible night?
The night most death
and there I was
dying again
voiceless and again
dying with each
bullet lodged
in the deepest depths
of what I remain
(and with each silence
of stone and mortar
that sheds the white
of your indifference
onto the shadow
of what I no longer am
and never will be again).
I died how many times
in the night of calunga?
In the brackish night,
night without end,
the oceanic night, all
emptied of blood,
I died how many times
in the terrible night
the night of calunga
in the Bairro Cabula?
I’ve died so many times
but they never kill me
once and for all.
My blood is a seed
that the wind roots
in the belly of the earth
and I am born again
and again and my name
is that which does not die
before making the night
no longer the silent
partner of death
but the mother that births
children the color of night
and watches over them
as a panther
who shows, in the light
of her gaze and in
the sharpness of her teeth,
just what she will do
if the hand of evil
even imagines
troubling the sleep
of her cub.
I’ve died so many times
but I am always
reborn stronger
brave and beautiful—
all I know is to be.
I am many, I extend
across the world
and across time inside
me and I am so many
one day I will make
life live.
Translated by Dan Hanrahan
