Léopold Sédar Senghor

(for jazz orchestra and trumpet solo) New York! At first I was bewildered by your beauty, Those huge, long-legged, golden girls. So shy, at first, before your blue metallic eyes and icy smile, So shy. And full of despair at the end of skyscraper streets Raising my owl eyes at the eclipse of the sun. Your light is sulphurous against the pale towers Whose heads strike lightning into the sky, Skyscrapers defying storms with their steel shoulders And weathered skin of stone. But two weeks on the naked sidewalks of Manhattan— At the end of the third week the fever Overtakes you with a jaguar’s leap Two weeks without well water or pasture all birds of the air Fall suddenly dead under the high, sooty terraces. No laugh from a growing child, his hand in my cool hand. No mother’s breast, but nylon legs. Legs and breasts Without smell or sweat. No tender word, and no lips, Only artificial hearts paid for in cold cash And not one book offering wisdom. The painter’s palette yields only coral crystals. Sleepless nights, O nights of Manhattan! Stirring with delusions while car horns blare the empty hours And murky streams carry away hygenic loving Like rivers overflowing with the corpses of babies. II Now is the time of signs and reckoning, New York! Now is the time of manna and hyssop. You have only to listen to God’s trombones, to your heart Beating to the rhythm of blood, your blood. I saw Harlem teeming with sounds and ritual colors And outrageous smells— At teatime in the home of the drugstore-deliveryman I saw the festival of Night begin at the retreat of day. And I proclaim Night more truthful than the day. It is the pure hour when God brings forth Life immemorial in the streets, All the amphibious elements shinning like suns. Harlem, Harlem! Now I’ve seen Harlem, Harlem! A green breeze of corn rising from the pavements Plowed by the Dan dancers’ bare feet, Hips rippling like silk and spearhead breasts, Ballets of water lilies and fabulous masks And mangoes of love rolling from the low houses To the feet of police horses. And along sidewalks I saw streams of white rum And streams of black milk in the blue haze of cigars. And at night I saw cotton flowers snow down From the sky and the angels’ wings and sorcerers’ plumes. Listen, New York! O listen to your bass male voice, Your vibrant oboe voice, the muted anguish of your tears Falling in great clots of blood, Listen to the distant beating of your nocturnal heart, The tom-tom’s rhythm and blood, tom-tom blood and tom-tom. III New York! I say New York, let black blood flow into your blood. Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life Let it give your bridges the curve of hips and supple vines. Now the ancient age returns, unity is restored, The reconciliation of the Lion and Bull and Tree Idea links to action, the ear to the heart, sign to meaning. See your rivers stirring with musk alligators And sea cows with mirage eyes. No need to invent the Sirens. Just open your eyes to the April rainbow And your eyes, especially your ears, to God Who in one burst of saxophone laughter Created heaven and earth in six days, And on the seventh slept a deep Negro sleep.

Woman, place your soothing hands upon my brow, Your hands softer than fur. Above us balance the palm trees, barely rustling In the night breeze. Not even a lullaby. Let the rhythmic silence cradle us. Listen to its song. Hear the beat of our dark blood, Hear the deep pulse of Africa in the mist of lost villages. Now sets the weary moon upon its slack seabed Now the bursts of laughter quiet down, and even the storyteller Nods his head like a child on his mother’s back The dancers’ feet grow heavy, and heavy, too, Come the alternating voices of singers. Now the stars appear and the Night dreams Leaning on that hill of clouds, dressed in its long, milky pagne. The roofs of the huts shine tenderly. What are they saying So secretly to the stars? Inside, the fire dies out In the closeness of sour and sweet smells. Woman, light the clear-oil lamp. Let the Ancestors Speak around us as parents do when the children are in bed. Let us listen to the voices of the Elissa Elders. Exiled like us They did not want to die, or lose the flow of their semen in the sands. Let me hear, a gleam of friendly souls visits the smoke-filled hut, My head upon your breast as warm as tasty dang streaming from the fire, Let me breathe the odor of our Dead, let me gather And speak with their living voices, let me learn to live Before plunging deeper than the diver Into the great depths of sleep.

This Luxembourg morning, this Luxembourg autumn, As I walk back and forth upon my youth, No strollers, no fountains, no boats in the water, No children, no flowers. Ah! September flowers and the sunburnt shouts of children Defying the coming winter. Now only two old fellows trying to play tennis. This autumn morning without children—the children’s theater closed! This Luxembourg where I no longer find my youth, The years as fresh as cut grass. Comrades, my dreams are vanquished in despair, are they not? Here they fall like leaves with other leaves, Older, mortally wounded, trampled, bitter with blood, Gathered together for what common grave? I no longer know this Luxembourg, those soldiers at attention. They set up cannons to protect the Senators’ aimless retirement They dig trenches under the bench where I learned about The sweet budding of lips. This sign, ah! yes, of dangerous youth! . . . I watch the leaves fall into these false shelters, into graves Into trenches where the blood of an entire generation flows Europe is burying the nations’ leaven And the hope of new races.

Today is Sunday. I fear the crowd of my fellows with such faces of stone. From my glass tower filled with headaches and impatient Ancestors, I contemplate the roofs and hilltops in the mist. In the stillness—somber, naked chimneys. Below them my dead are asleep and my dreams turn to ashes. All my dreams, blood running freely down the streets And mixing with blood from the butcher shops. From this observatory like the outskirts of town I contemplate my dreams lost along the streets, Crouched at the foot of the hills like the guides of my race On the rivers of the Gambia and the Saloum And now on the Seine at the foot of these hills. Let me remember my dead! Yesterday was All Saints’ Day, the solemn anniversary of the Sun, And I had no dead to honor in any cemetery. O Forefathers! You who have always refused to die, Who knew how to resist Death from the Sine to the Seine, And now in the fragile veins of my indomitable blood, Guard my dreams as you did your thin-legged migrant sons! O Ancestors! Defend the roofs of Paris in this dominical fog, The roofs that protect my dead. Let me leave this tower so dangerously secure And descend to the streets, joining my brothers Who have blue eyes and hard hands.