BLACK WOMAN

Naked woman, black woman

Clothed with your colour which is life, with your form which is beauty!

In your shadow I have grown up; the gentleness of your hands was laid over my eyes.

And now, high up on the sun-baked pass, at the heart of summer, at the heart of noon,

I come upon you, my Promised Land,

And your beauty strikes me to the heart like the flash of an eagle.

Naked woman, dark woman

Firm-fleshed ripe fruit, sombre raptures of balck wine, mouth making lyrical my mouth

Savannah stetching to clear horizons, savannah shuddering beneath the East Wind's eager caresses

Carved tom-tom, taut tom-tom, muttering under the Conqueror's fingers

Your solemn contral to voice is the spiritual song of the Beloved.

Naked woman, dark woman

Oil that no breath ruffles, calm oil on the athelete's flanks,

On the flanks of the Princes of Mali

Gazelle limbed in Paradise, pearls are stars on the night of your skin

Delights of the mind, the glinting of red gold against your watered skin

Under the shadow of your hair, my care is lightened

By the neighbouring suns of your eyes.

Naked woman, black woman,

I sing your beauty that passes, the form that I fix in the Eternal,

Before jealous Fate turn you to ashes to feed the roots of life.

                                                                                      By:  Leopold Sedar Senghor, (Translated by John Reed and Clive Wake)