Poem for you by Paul Laraque

in my two hands
I'm holding a book on the life of Jacques Roumain
your breathing lifts your breast
It's your beauty that moves
an there's a painful human hope
protecting tomorrow from today's hell
I dream I dream of Guernica
I embrace you I embrace you
and may the voice of Lorca live on
the breathless wind stretches itself out up the sea


exact like the sword of clarity
o raging poetry from all the jungles forged
a shadow is terrified by the torch of Cesaire
and the word of Paul Eluard
cutting the knot of evil
eonfer on the dignity of  art
the evidence of crystal

I blend you with all I hold dear
you are blood in the flesh
you are saddened and smile in the eyes of peasants
and there's oxygen in the air
when your look wears the light
of our grandest summer skies
I think about the man I used to be
gone with the waves of life
I'm reborn in the root of your desire
don't say Im raving
we will pass through the Manchurian border
be it in  Vietnam or in the Congo
Madrid or Santo Domingo
be it in Harlem or in Cap-Haitien

everywhere sadness is like a yeast
our anger swells
o thunder of thunder
we'll be carrying the axe and the flame

your lips  is my wound
red of the first dawn
where goldmerchants are dying
and the people's blood quietly burns
like water's heart at its source
but when the river begins to flow
nothing can stop the proletarian march
a new sun is lighting up the earth