Fanon in Tunis After Tunis

Speak of exile in a dank room.
Write that word on damp paper
before opening blue shutters.
Before leaving the apartment for the street

before coughing after your first sip of coffee
before recalling the creak. I'm asking why
the world has become this. Silent sirens this
epidemic this twisting of a wretched thing.

This was perhaps your question
but you had an answer.
Spoke to it at the University
then that evening surprised by

the purple scatterings on the streets.
So fragile strange even
this life against stone.
You are sipping coffee watching

people pass each other.
After you have passed I'm
watching people pass each other
yet I'm sipping tea.

You loved poetry.
You brought others
to hear Césaire.
The poet is perpetually exiled now.

Now but not then.
Now because of then.
Now because of now.
Now because we are now.