New York! At first I was confused by your beauty, by those great golden long-legged girls.
So shy at first before your blue metallic eyes, your frosted smile
So shy. And the anguish in the depths of skyscraper streets
Lifting eyes hawkhooded to the sun’s eclipse.
Sulphurous your light and livid the towers with heads that thunderbolt the sky
The skyscrapers which defy the storms with muscles of steel and stone-glazed hide.
But two weeks on the bare sidewalks of Manhattan
– At the end of the third week the fever seizes you with the pounce of a leopard
Two weeks without rivers or fields, all the birds of the air
Falling sudden and dead on the high ashes of flat rooftops.
No smile of a child blooms, his hand refreshed in my hand,
No mother’s breast, but only nylon legs. Legs and breasts that have no sweat nor smell.
No tender word for there are no lips, only artificial hearts paid for in hard cash
And no book where wisdom may be read. The painter’s palette blossoms with crystals of coral.
Nights of insomnia oh nights of Manhattan! So agitated by flickering lights, while motor-horns howl of empty hours
And while dark waters carry away hygienic loves, like rivers flooded with the corpses of children.
Now is the time of signs and reckonings
New York! Now is the time of manna and hyssop.
You must but listen to the trombones of God, let your heart beat in the rhythm of blood, your blood.
I saw in Harlem humming with noise with stately colours and flamboyant smells
– It was teatime at the house of the seller of pharmaceutical products –
I saw them preparing the festival of night for escape from the day.
I proclaim night more truthful than the day.
It was the pure hour when in the streets God makes the life that goes back beyond memory spring up
All the amphibious elements shining like suns.
Harlem Harlem! Now I saw Harlem! A green breeze of corn springs up from the pavements ploughed by the naked feet of dancers
Bottoms waves of silk and sword-blade breasts, water-lily ballets and fabulous masks.
At the feet of police-horses roll the mangoes of love from low houses.
And I saw along the sidewalks streams of white rum streams of black milk in the blue fog of cigars.
I saw the sky in the evening snow cotton-flowers and seraphims’ wings and sorcerers’ plumes.
Listen New York! Oh listen to your male voice of brass vibrating with oboes, the anguish choked with tears falling in great clots of blood
Listen to the distant beating of your nocturnal heart, rhythm and blood of the tom-tom, tom-tom blood and tom-tom.
New York! I say to you: New York let black blood flow into your blood
That it may rub the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life,
That it may give to your bridges the bend of buttocks and the suppleness of creepers.
Now return the most ancient times, the unity recovered, the reconciliation of the Lion the Bull and the Tree
Thought linked to act, ear to heart, sign to sense.
There are your rivers murmuring with scented crocodiles and mirage-eyed manatees. And no need to invent the Sirens.
But it is enough to open the eyes to the rainbow of April
And the ears, above all the ears, to God who out of the laugh of a saxophone created the heaven and the earth in six days.
And the seventh day he slept the great sleep of the Negro.