Dennis Brutus (1924 - 2009)

Les hommages au militant qu'il fut jusqu'au bout ont trop souvent laissé de côté l'immense poète :

Take out the poetry and fire
or watch it ember out of sight,
sanity reassembles its ash
the moon relinquishes the night.

But here and here remain the scalds
a sudden turn or breath may ache,
and I walk soft on cindered pasts
for thought or hope (what else?) can break.


Dennis Brutus, 1963
in Poetry & Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader (Haymarket Books)