Eros

(After Femme noire by Léopold Sédar Senghor)

Your snowy skin and eyes of hoarfrost blue
Look to emit apocalyptic light.
Like Ragnarok, Eurasia’s daughter, you
Give birth to kingdoms radiant and bright.
Your angry grace ignites a frosty fright,
A filly’s spryness, crushing like a steer
On plains where we emerged from primal night,
Then calm lets finer feelings reappear
And through your image Graeco-Roman temples peer.

Your hair may not be light like heaven’s bolts,
Your irises not quite of Aegir’s hue.
Still, since I played among ebullient colts,
Our bond was kinship I innately knew.
Your hands recalling Persian, Slav and Jew,
Your sculpted features and your skin like stone,
Your tempered passions like a Baltic view,
Your brows like prows that swim for the unknown –
Before such icy splendour may the world lie prone.

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