You assailed me once again that night,

That moonless night beside the treacherous pond,

A panther unleashed from the arc of tree branches.

Ah! the fire of your claws in my loins,

And the anguish makes me cry out at midnight

Down to the trembling prisoners of my toes.

O death, never familiar, three times a visitor,

I remember running after life like a child

Chasing heavy fruit rolled under a palmyra tree

—When suddenly a second batch knocks him flat to the ground.

Fearful death who puts to flight faster than the warrior

Seven times around the City of seven gates,

See me now in the fullness of age, of desire, of will

When winter already appears, rheumatic rains and your

Deep clutches.  Haven’t you felt the force of my loins?

My muscular will?  I know Winter

Will brighten during a long springlike day,

The scent of the earth will rise to intoxicate me

Stronger than the fragrance of flowers,

The Earth will set its hard breasts

Quivering under the caresses of the Conqueror,

And I shall spring up like the Annunciator, I will

Show off Africa like the sculptor of serious masks,

And coming back to the grass and joining her deep voice

To the chorus of dawn, will be a black woman

With a fawn-colored head, who leaves without a word from either

Of us one luminous winter day in Ile-de-France.

(translated by Melvin Dixon)