African Culture

Asian Culture

African LiteratureFamous Poets

Agostinho Neto

(September 17, 1922 – September 10, 1979) served as the first President of Angola (1975–1979), leading the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the war for independence and the civil war. His birthday is celebrated as National Heroes Day, a public holiday in Angola.

KINAXIXII was glad to sit downon a bench in Kinaxixiat six o'clock of a hot eveningand just sit there ...

Someone would comemaybeto sit beside me

And I would see the black facesof the people going uptownin no hurryexpressing absence in thejumbled Kimbundu they conversed in.

I would see the tired footstepsof the servants whose fathers

also were servantslooking for love here, glory there, wantingsomething more than drunkenness in everyalcohol.

Neither happiness nor hate.

After the sun had setlights would be turned on and Iwould wander offthinking that our life after all is simpletoo simplefor anyone who is tired and still has to walk.

Léopold Sédar Senghor

(9 October 1906 –

20 December 2001) was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who for two decades served as the first president of Senegal (1960–1980). Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française. Before independence, he founded the political party called the Senegalese Democratic Bloc.

BLACK WOMANNaked woman, black womanClothed with your colour which is life,with your form which is beauty!In your shadow I have grown up; thegentleness of your hands was laid over my eyes.And now, high up on the sun-bakedpass, at the heart of summer, at the heart of noon,I come upon you, my Promised Land,And your beauty strikes me to the

heartlike the flash of an eagle.Naked woman, dark womanFirm-fleshed ripe fruit, sombre rapturesof black wine, mouth making lyrical my mouthSavannah stretching to clear horizons,savannah shuddering beneath the East Wind'seager caressesCarved tom-tom, taut tom-tom, muttering

under the Conqueror's fingersYour solemn contralto voice is thespiritual song of the Beloved.Naked woman, dark womanOil that no breath ruffles, calm oil on theathlete's flanks, on the flanks of the Princes of MaliGazelle limbed in Paradise, pearls are stars on thenight of your skinDelights of the mind, the glinting of red

gold against your watered skinUnder the shadow of your hair, my careis lightened by the neighbouring suns of your eyes.Naked woman, black woman,I sing your beauty that passes, the formthat I fix in the Eternal,Before jealous fate turn you to ashes tofeed the roots of life.

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