What If Poetry Led this World of Prose?

I read on the Experiencing History blog today, that today in Black history in 1960 a poet was elected as the first president of Senegal. Leopold Senghor studied French grammar and taught in unversities around France. A year after enrolling as a French military officer, he was taken captive during German invasion. During the two years he spent in prison camps, he spent his time writing poetry. After the war, Senghor became Linguistics Department with the École Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer. He eventually became the first president of Senegal and this poet and philosopher personally drafted the Senegalese national anthem, "Pincez tous vos koras, frappez les balafons".

Here's one of his poems:

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.