{"id":103261,"date":"2024-08-19T08:28:10","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T06:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/reading-room\/poetry-shelf\/%d0%b7%d0%b0%d0%b3%d0%bb%d0%b5%d0%b4%d0%b0%d0%bd%d0%b8-%d0%b2%d0%be-%d1%81%d0%be%d0%bd%d1%86%d0%b5%d1%82%d0%be\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T12:10:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T11:10:42","slug":"gazing-at-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/reading-room\/poetry-shelf\/gazing-at-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"gazing at the sun"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\t\t\tgazing at the sun<\/em>\t<\/h2>\n\tI-who was a slave-
\nand you-who were a slave but are now a stone,
\nare now a House of Slaves
\nthat towers like a threat, like a lighthouse over the island,
\na hundred million times brighter than the Lighthouse of the Mamelles,
\nwhich lights the way for planes and ships,
\nthose latter-day pirates of modern civilization,
\nthat seek to plunder the sky and the ocean waters.\nYour light comes from the depths of the ages,
\nfrom the low straw huts in the savannas and ancient forests
\nwhere you sit with your wife and children,
\nand all of you thresh corn to bake your bread,
\nand no one even asks about the bread and whether it will suffice.
\nIt is enough for you to look at the setting sun
\nas it weaves itself into the branches and hangs upon the thinnest of them,
\nso it resembles-frighteningly resembles-a bloodshot eye
\nthat looks only at you and your family, and you tell the children:
\n“That is the eye of our Great Father, and the tears
\nthat welled in him as he walked the earth
\nwill pierce the grass and trees as light,
\nand all will be afraid and stop dead in their tracks: birds and wild animals,
\nsnakes, mammals and poisonous lizards,
\nand an endless deep night will fall suddenly over Africa
\nwhen the sun-eye plunges into the ocean.”
\nAnd when deep night reigns over Africa
\nyou will think you had never seen daylight.\nThe children huddle close to their mother,
\nand they all huddle close to you.
\nAnd to calm them, you tell them stories
\nabout the good spirits, about the ancestors,
\nwhose good fortune it was to have died in their own country,
\nfor this is the only way to preserve the connection with the living.
\nWith each new story the eyes of the children blaze even more,
\nresembling at first little flames that lap like tongues
\nat the edges of the forest,
\nbut the strong wind of the stories fuels these flames
\nand a terrible fire flares in the children’s eyes,
\nthreatening to burn everything in the forest.
\nSoon the eyes of the children begin to resemble
\nthe sun-eye of the Great Father,
\nand their flames reach even here,
\nhere to the island of Gor\u00e9e-to the House of the Slaves.\nHuddled against it, I am crumbling like a stone
\nand sinking, sinking, into this light.\n\tAco \u0160opov<\/a>, “The Light of the Slaves<\/a>” in\u00a0The Song of the Black Woman<\/i><\/a>, 1976
\nTranslated from the Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer and Rawley Grau,\u00a0The Long Coming of the Fire<\/em><\/a>, Dallas, Deep Vellum, 2023.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

gazing at the sun I-who was a slave- and you-who were a slave but are now a stone, are now a House of Slaves that towers like a threat, like a lighthouse over the island, a hundred million times brighter than the Lighthouse of the Mamelles, which lights the way for planes and ships, those…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":98423,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-103261","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/103261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103261"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/103261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103631,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/103261\/revisions\/103631"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}