This 13-line free-verse poem starts with gratitude, “I thank you, my God, / for having created me black,” and establishes a mood of celebration. The next line, a continuation of the initial thought, creates a startling counterpoint: “for making me the mixture of all sufferings.” The initial mood of rejoicing is negated, leaving a feeling of tremendous weight and shared pain.

This impression is reinforced when the narrator asserts that white is a color of special status, “the color of occasions,” while black is drab and heavy, “the color of every day.” The feeling of burden is strengthened when the poet, now a metonym for Africa, states, “I have been carrying the world / since the beginning of time,” a reference to every form of exploitation and abuse that Black peoples everywhere have endured. In this poem, Dadié, spokesperson for the “dark” continent, both cries and decries the suffering of his people.

When the poet writes, “We are the night / we are the mystery,” he evokes the historical European view of Africa as a dark and mysterious continent, faintly implying the traditional European conceit that whites brought enlightenment to Black Africa. Yet the last two lines of the poem—“And with us, and for us, / there are the stars.”—restore the positive mood suggested by the opening. The stars, compasses in the sky, beacons of light and hope, shine for Dadié and his people. In closing his poem thus, the writer summons a shining road ahead for Africa and its peoples.

One last and intriguing aspect of the poem must be explored, the lines that read “and my smile on the world / created the day in the night.” Surely there is an allusion here to Africa as the cradle of life, the origin of humankind. This thought connects with the preceding lines: “I have been carrying the world / since the beginning of time.” Africa has borne not only the burden of the world’s suffering and pain; she has also carried the world in her womb. When Africa smiled, she gave life—and martyrs—to the world.

Bibliography
Dadié, Bernard Binlin. “Je remercie Dieu” (I Thank God). In La Ronde des jours, translated by Debra Popkin. In Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, edited by Leonard S. Klein. New York: Frederick Unger, 1981.

Categories: British Literature, Literature

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