Cape Verde Twilight

O brown naked woman,
in the shadow of your chestnut hair
I became an aphrodisiac poet
and a Provençal troubadour!


Tonight, I feel thunderstruck
by your nakedness,
as if hit by a bolt of lightning
In a hurricane sky!


Yes, I’m struck full in the heart
by your beauty spread out before me,
like the Promised Land
in Abraham’s dream!


Even before I touched you,
I wanted to envelop your flesh,
soft as a fur,
with my dark deep eyes
of a falcon certain of its prey
and caress with those same eyes
your black diamond,
like a moth
which has spread its wings
around your vulva
as if it were an oil lamp!


Oh! How your body is like
a savannah with pure horizons
or a heifer in all the plenitude
of its well-fed flesh!
And how your skin shimmers like silk
beneath the red-gold rays
of a sun setting in the sands!


Veterans of life’s Picrocholine wars
will not fail to observe
that your beauty will not last!
That is why, because your beauty is ephemeral,
I want to fix it
in antique marble,
before it swoons in the night
like a Cape Verde twilight!

FROM THE COLLECTION OF POEMS "SANG NEGRE"

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF THEO CRASSAS OCTOBER 2012
EDITIONS ENCRES VIVES. COLL. LIEU. AFRIQUE NOIRE