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TO A MALABAR GIRL
Your feet are delicate as your hands, your heavy
Haunch would fill the loveliest white with envy;
To the thoughtful artist your body is sweet and fresh;
Your velvet eyes are browner than your flesh.
Born beneath hot blue skies, your only tasks
Are to keep cool water and perfume in the flasks,
to light your master's pipe and chase away
Mosquitoes from his bed; when the new day
Makes the plane-trees sing, already you are
Buying pineapples and bananas in the bazaar.
All day, here and there, on naked feet
You wander as you wish and hum those sweet
Outlandish songs. On scarlet-mantled eves
You stretch your body on soft mats of leaves,
In drifting dreams where hummingbirds dart through
A landscape gracious, flowery as you.Happy child, why wish to see our France,
Its too many people mowed down by mischance,
And bidding goodbye to your dear tamarinds,
Trust your life to lusty sailors and rought winds?
There, half-dressed in muslins, you would go
Shivering beneath the brunt of hail and snow.
How you'd regret your happy carefree pranks
When brutal corsets prison your soft flanks!
When you must glean your supper from our mud
By selling the fragrance of your exotic blood.
Through our dirty fog you would follow with sad eyes
A mirage of cocoa palms from absent skies. |
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