[I write on the planks]
I hear water
racking its brains
as it slices through spume.
I write on the planks
of the ship
I hear water
racking its brains
as it slices through spume.
And first I gave away
my flask,
and then I placed my head
in the sky
to forget my empty hands.
___
Original text: Torabully, Khal. “[J’écris sur les planches]” 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.
