Night Of Sine

Woman, put on my forehead your balsam hands,

your hands softer than fur.
Up there, the tall palm trees swinging in the night breeze
rustle hardly.
Not even the nurse’s song.
Let the rhythmic silence rock us.
Let’s listen to its song, let’s listen to the beating of our dark
blood, let’s listen
To the beating-of the dark pulse of Africa in the mist of lost
villages.

Look how the tired moon sinks towards its bed of slack water.
Look how the burst of laughter doze off, and even the bards
themselves
dandle their heads like children on the backs of their mother.
Look how the feet of the dancers grow heavy, as well as the
tongue of the alternating chorus.

This is the hour of the stars and of the Night that dreams
reclining on that range of clouds, draped in its long gown of
milk.
The roofs of the huts gleam gently. What are they so
confidently telling to the stars?
Inside, the hearth extinguishes in the intimacy of bitter and
sweet scents.

Woman, light the lamp of butterclear oil, let the Ancesters, like
their parents, talk the children in bed.
Let’s listen to the voice of the Ancients of Elissa. Exiled as we
are they did not want to die, their seminal flood is lost in the
sand.
Let me hear, in the smoky which I visit, a reflection of
propitious souls
Let my head on your breast, warm as a dang taken from the
fire and smoking.
Let me inhale the smell of our Dead, let me collect and repeat
their living voice, let me learn
To live before I sink, deeper than the diver, into the lofty depth
of sleep.
Prayer To Masks

Masks! Oh Masks!
Black mask, red mask, you black and white masks,
Rectangular masks through whom the spirit breathes,
I greet you in silence!
And you too, my panterheaded ancestor.
You guard this place, that is closed to any feminine laughter,
to any mortal smile.
You purify the air of eternity, here where I breathe the air of
my fathers.
Masks of maskless faces, free from dimples and wrinkles.
You have composed this image, this my face that bends
over the altar of white paper.
In the name of your image, listen to me!
Now while the Africa of despotism is dying – it is the agony of
a pitiable princess,
Just like Europe to whom she is connected through the
naval.
Now turn your immobile eyes towards your children who
have been called
And who sacrifice their lives like the poor man his last
garment
So that hereafter we may cry ‘here’ at the rebirth of the world
being the leaven that the white flour needs.
For who else would teach rhythm to the world that has
died of machines and cannons?
For who else should ejaculate the cry of joy, that arouses the
dead and the wise in a new dawn?
Say, who else could return the memory of life to men with a
torn hope?
They call us cotton heads, and coffee men, and oily men.
They call us men of death.
But we are the men of the dance whose feet only gain
power when they beat the hard soil.

About the Author-poet

Léopold Sédar Senghor

Senegalese poet, writer, and statesman Léopold Sédar Senghor was born near Dakar
in the town of Joal to a Fulbe mother and a Serer trader father. He was educated at the
École Nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer in Paris, where he became friends
with Aimé Césaire and future French president George Pompidou. After earning his
French citizenship, Senghor taught in Tours and Paris. He joined the French army
during World War II and spent 18 months in a German prison camp. After serving
successive terms representing Senegal in the French National Assembly, Senghor
returned to his native land, where he led his nation’s independence movement in
1960. He eventually became Senegal’s first democratically elected president, a post
which he held for the next twenty years. Senghor’s political and literary careers were
inextricably linked. Residing part-time in France, he wrote poems of resistance in
French which engaged his Catholic spirituality even as they celebrated his Senegalese
heritage. Senghor is the author of several collections of poetry, including Chants
d’ombre (1945), Nocturnes (1961), and The Collected Poetry (1991, translated by
Melvin Dixon). He also edited an anthology of work by African poets in French
colonies, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Négre et Malagache (1945, with an
introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre). His nonfiction work includes numerous volumes on
politics, philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. Senghor co-founded, with Aimé
Césaire, the Négritude movement, which promotes distinctly African cultural values
and aesthetics, in opposition to the influence of French colonialism and European
exploitation. He also co-founded the journal Presence Africaine with Alione Diop.
Senghor, the first African invited to join the Académie Française, was awarded
honorary doctorates from 37 universities, in addition to many other literary honors.
Senghor died at his home in France at the age of 95.