The weakness of the heart is holly…
Ah! You think that I never loved her
My Negress fair with palmoil, slender as a plume
Thighs of a starlet otter, of Kilimanjaro snow
Breasts of mellow rice-fields, hills of acacias under the East Wind.
Noliwe with her arms of boas, lips of the adder
Noliwe, her eyes were constellations there is no need of moon or drum
But her voice in my head and the feverous pulse of the night…
Ah! You think that I never loved her!
But these long years, this breaking on the wheel of the years, this carcan strangling every act
This long night without sleep I wandered like a
mare from the Zambezi, running and rushing at the stars
Gnawed by a nameless suffering, like the leopards in the trap.
I would not have killed her if I had loved her less.
