[Ahoy, I will be a referent of men]
Ahoy, I will tend to the tingling of being
by tapping on my soul.
Ahoy, I will be a referent of men,
I will stand with the lot of them.
Ahoy, I will tend to the tingling of being
by tapping on my soul.
I’ll take on all feelings of pogroms,
avatar of all chromosomes,
my light my burning tawa.
The moon sows white corals,
emptied masts relieved of shadows.
Ahoy,
involuntary waves
are in my eyes.
Ahoy.
My only homeland will be a human cry!
In each human wound, I will hear my race!
Ahoy, ahoy, ahoy!
____
Original text: Torabully, Khal. “[Ohé, je serai référent d’hommes]” from Cale d’étoiles (Cargo Hold of Stars). Saint Denis, Reunion: Azalées Editions, 1992.
Khal Torabully, from Mauritius, writing in French and Mauritian Creole, is a prize-winning poet, essayist, film director, and semiologist who has authored some 25 books, and coined the term “coolitude,” much in the same way that Aimé Césaire developed the concept of negritude.
Nancy Naomi Carlson is a poet and translator whose translation of Khal Torabully’s Cargo Hold of Stars: Coolitude (Seagull, 2021) won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Decorated with the French Academic Palms and twice awarded NEA literature translation grants, she’s the author of An Infusion of Violets (Seagull Books, 2019), named “New & Noteworthy” by The New York Times. She’s the translation editor for On the Seawall.