Sun I adore you like the savages
bellies flat at water’s edge

Sun you varnish your chromos enamel
your fruit baskets, your animals

Make me the tanned, salty body,
hide my hideous ache far away

The negro with the shiny teeth
is black outside, pink beneath

I’m dark within and blushing
out, start the refurbishing

Change my odor and color
as Hyacinthus was changed to flower

Make the cicada bray in the pine
make me smell the bread oven’s on

The tree at noon all swollen with night
spills it at dusk for its private delight

Make me unbridle my bad reveries,
sun, serpent of Adam and Eve!

Help me get it through my head
my poor friend Jean is dead, dead

Lottery, inventory your prizes
of bowls, of cutting knives, of vases

You unwrap your willy-nillies
on feral beasts, across the Antilles

For us pull out your nicest stuff
so to leave our eyes unscuffed

Baraque de la Goulue a merry-go-
round in mirrors, velour, arpeggio

Rip out my wrong, yank it hard
charlatan in a carriage of gold

How hot I am! because it’s midday
I no longer know very well what I say

No longer have my shadow around me
sun! months-in-menagerie

Sun, Buffalo Bill, Barnum,
you addle better than opium

You’re a bullfighter, a harlequin,
you own a watch’s golden chain

You’re a blue black man who boxes
the equators, even equinoxes

Sun I tolerate your knocks
your brutal knuckles against my neck

Still it’s you I like the best
sun, infernal sustenance