The Damsel From The North Poem by Goodness Tchibueze

From the plains and plateaux
Of the Guinea savannah,
Came, with a calabash loosely
Hanging on her head,
Clad in white gown;
Unsalvable smiles tearing her face,
And the day swelling in her dreamy eyes;
A damsel of ebony skin,
Varnished by the sun,
Her hue the fertility of earth;
Dancing to a sound echoing
From a distant clime; Never halting, she dog-noses the sound...
Her right leg bending
Slightly from the knee, the left leg
Keeping her balance,
Both feet bare, beating the earth
Who sheds a dusty tear!
Now, she is holding the calabash
Between her two palms,
Lifting it up to the face
Of the sun who sits
Prominently, on his throne,
Up there, in the horizon,
To observe the content therein.

The calabash fetching hot air and dust,
She lowers it, a bit down,
And up it goes, again
Repeating the usual cycle!
Caught in the spell of her dance,
Bending, she drops the calabash,
And heaving, in an acrobatic air,
Herself up;
Collecting the sunlight
Into her cupped palms,
She rubs them together,
Lifting her hands
Up and down -
As she did with the calabash -
Interchanging the calabash and the sunlight,
Intermittently, between her palms...

'This damsel had danced all the way,
From the Northern grassland,
With a crescent confined in her calabash,
Down to the rainforest
Of the South-eastern clime,
Where my heart, beside a crucifix,
Throbbed in wild ecstasy -
(The sound that had drawn her
Dancing my way) -
Where i rendered to her a whole note of
Absolute audience and attention.
She danced, way far, into my heart,
Where the rhythmic play
Of my heart commingled
With her not-ending dance! '