Leopold Senghor's Night in Sine

Night in Sine

BY LÉOPOLD SÉDAR SENGHOR

TRANSLATED BY MELVIN DIXON

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.

Leopold Sedar Senghor was an African poet, who contributed much to the Negritude movement, started by the French-speaking black intellectuals that looked at accepting the fact that one was black and that the fact came with its own history, values and culture and sought to acquaint all people of African descent with freedom and dignity.

In the poem, “Night in Sine”, Senghor looks at the subtleties of his culture and embodies them in the image of womanhood, with soft hands, singing a song, not quite a lullaby. Throughout the poem, Senghor emphasizes on the darkness around, in blood, the night that caresses him, in the smoke-filled hut and in the great depths of sleep, but he speaks of these in honor of what his heritage is, that what is dark may also be good. He reveals affection for Africa in his articulation of the magnificence of Negritude.

            Senghor uses repetition as a powerful force to drive his imagery home. He continually looks at how important ‘listening’ is and how each one is cradled in a ‘rhythmic silence’ because that is how they have been conditioned in their subjugation – to not fight back, to accept, to go on within the circle of life. But Senghor sparks a ray of hope in his poetry by pointing to how though the attempts to crush their spirits have been many, yet, the beats of Africa still run in their ‘dark blood’, pulsing though much seems lost. He uses vivid imagery to entice the senses, right from the beginning of the poem to capture his audience and keep them engaged. The poem is never just a string of words, but one that is built to make you feel like you’re there within the experience of the speaker. The weary moon and its slack seabed, reinforce the pattern of behavior and its familiarity. The speaker talks of how even the storyteller, generally one to be found most enthusiastic or teeming with life, quietens with the mother’s touch.

            He paints a magnificent picture of the roofs having conversations with the stars as they reflect light tenderly, pointing to the Negritude of his culture and how all can take pride in it. The speaker wishes to go back to the voices of the ancestors, heeding their wisdom and not wanting their lineage to fall short of glory. It becomes a give and take relationship between what is now and what had been before, where the former chooses to become the sustenance for the latter, and the latter becomes the basis on which what is may build and claim value in.

            Throughout this piece, we see a celebration of African culture and ancestry, and an anger towards all that colonized its beauty. A violence towards the violation and exploitation, a metaphorical death of Africanness. He ends the piece with the speaker asking to be allowed to learn to live, to discover what it truly is before it was contaminated.