David Mandessi Diop

This is a collection of poems by the French poet (of Senegalese and Cameroonian descent, not to be mistaken for his namesake, author of [b:At Night All Blood is Black|50403480|At Night All Blood is Black|David Diop|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1581398524l/50403480._SX50_.jpg|64411376], with whom he shares Senegalese heritage) published when he was around 29, and translated into English after his death. It's an impassioned collection, one that carries show more the responsibility that was common around that time in writers originating from the colonies. Writing against colonialism, recording the travesties of oppression, calling for liberation, and showing the humanness and pride of the subjugated. Unfortunately, its writer died very young, and with such young death one mourns the promise and potential and evolution that comes with age, that could have been. The two poems that I think stand out in this collection are "Les Heures" and "Défi à la force" translated as "Challenge to Force" and "The Hours" by Simon Mpondo and Frank Jones:

The Hours
"There are hours for dreaming
In the calmness of nights in the hollow of silence
There are hours for doubting
And the heavy veil of words is torn in sobs
There are hours for suffering
Along the roads of war in the look of mothers
There are hours for loving
In the huts of light where the unique flesh sings
There is that which colors days to come
As the sun colors the flesh of plants
And in the delirium of hours
In the impatience of hours
The ever more fertile seed
Of hours from which equilibrium will be born"

Challenge to Force
"You who bend you who weep
You who die one day just like that not knowing why
You who struggle and stay awake for the Other's rest
You with no more laughter in your look
You my brother with face of fear and anguish
Rise and shout: NO!" show less