Noliwe
The weakness of the heart is holly...
Ah! You think that I never loved her
My Negress fair with palmoil, slender as a plume
Thighs of a starlet otter, of Kilimanjaro snow
Breasts of mellow rice-fields, hills of acacias under the
East Wind.
Noliwe with her arms of boas, lips of the adder
Noliwe, her eyes were constellations there is no need of moon or drum
But her voice in my head and the feverous pulse of the night …
Ah! You think that I never loved her!
But these long years, this breaking on the wheel of the
years, this carcan strangling every act
This long night without sleep I wandered like a
mare from the Zambezi, running and rushing at the stars
Gnawed by a nameless suffering, like the leopards in the trap.
I would not have killed her if I had loved her less.
I had to escape from doubt
From the intoxication of the milk of her mouth, from
the throbbing drum of the night of my blood
From my bowels of fervent lava, from the uranium
mines of my heart in the depths of my Blackness
From love of Noliwe
From the love of my black skinned People.
Leopold Sedar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Senegalese Negritude poet and politician. He was the first president of Senegal. Senghor was born on 9th October 1906 in Joal, French West Africa (present-day Senegal) and died on 20th December 2001 in Verson , France.
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