Abena Busia (1953 – ): « All my friends are exile », « Liberation » « and I am a woman » et « Caliban »

Abena Busia est née à Accra au Ghana, le 28 avril 1953. Militante féministe intersectionnelle, elle a publié plusieurs ouvrages sur la présence des femmes noires dans le monde littéraire. Elle a également enseigné dans plusieurs universités américaines comme Yale, UCLA ou Rutgers, et exercé la fonction de d’ambassadrice du Ghana au Brésil.

Voici quatre de ses poèmes que j’ai trouvés sur internet, je n’ai pas osé les traduire en français tant ils sont puissants et magnifiques.

 

All my friends are exile

All my friends are exiles,

born in one place, we live in another
and with true sophistication,
rendezvous
in most surprising places –
where you would never expect to find us.

Between us we people the world.

With aplomb and a command of languages
we stride across continents
with the self-assurance of those who know
with absolute certainty
where they come from.

With the globe at our our command,
we have everywhere to go,
but home.

Liberation

We are all mothers,
and we have that fire within us,
of powerful women
whose spirits are so angry
we can laugh beauty into life
and still make you taste
the salty tears of our knowledge-
For we are not tortured
anymore;
we have seen beyond your lies and disguises,
and we have mastered the language of words,
we have mastered speech
And know
we have also seen ourselves raw
and naked piece by piece until our flesh lies flayed
with blood on our own hands.
What terrible thing can you do us
which we have not done to ourselves?
What can you tell us
which we didn’t deceive ourselves with
a long time ago?
You cannot know how long we cried
until we laughed
over the broken pieces of our dreams.
Ignorance
shattered us into such fragments
we had to unearth ourselves piece by piece,
to recover with our own hands such unexpected relics
even we wondered
how we could hold such treasure.
Yes, we have conceived
to forge our mutilated hopes
beyond your imaginings
to declare the pain of our deliverance:
So do not even ask,
do not ask what it is we are labouring with this time;
Dreamers remember their dreams
when they are disturbed-
And you shall not escape
what we will make
of the broken pieces of our lives.

and I am a woman

and I am a woman
and I am a woman ravished and naked
chanting the words of a little girl lost
treading the edge of the waves

trying to recapture ….

the dream of a virgin robed in moonlight
reaching gestures across the waters
singing a song of home

I am a black man’s child, still
stranded on the shores of saxon seas

 

Caliban

This tongue that I have mastered
has mastered me;

has taught me curses
in the language of the master

has taught me bondage
in the language of the master

I speak this dispossession
in the language of the master


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