The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

LÉOPOLD SÉDAR SENGHOR

And our navel is tied to a Europe in death throes too.
Fix your changeless eyes on your marshaled children
Who are giving up their lives like a pauper his last clothes.
Let us answer ‘‘present’’ at the World’s rebirth
As the leaven that makes white flour into bread.
Tell me, who else could teach rhythm to a grave of guns and machines?
Or raise dawn’s joyous cry to wake the orphans and the dead?
Or spark life’s memory again in a man of gutted hopes?
They call us men of cotton, of co√ee, of oil.
They call us men of death.
But we are men of dance,
Whose feet grow strong by pounding the hard earth.
—hoyt rogers

The Young Sun’s Greeting

The young sun’s greeting
On my bed, your letter’s glow
All the sounds that burst from morning
Blackbirds’ brassy calls, jingle of gonoleks
Your smile on the grass, on the radiant dew.

In the innocent light, thousands of dragonflies
Quivering, like large black-winged golden bees
And like helicopters turning with gentle grace
On the limpid beach, gold and black the Tramiae basilares
I say the dance of Mali’s princesses.

You are the one I seek, on the path of the tiger-cats.
Your scent always yours, from the buzzing brambles of the bush
Headier than a growing lily’s perfume.
Your redolent throat leads me on, your scent wafted by Africa
When with my shepherd’s feet I trample tufts of wild mint.
The season done, my trials overcome, in the depths of the abyss
God! may I find you again, find your voice, your fragrance of vibrant light.
—hoyt rogers