You are, my green island,
designed in pirate and black,
the pirate lending the lines,
the shadows filled in by the black.
Together drums and the harquebus
exalt your dark-skin glory
with red gunpowder flowers
and the savage rhythms of bambula .

When the hurricane folds and unfolds
its fierce accordion of winds,
over the carpet of the sea
you — agile bayadere —
with slender palmtree legs
dance on the points of your toes.

You could have gone in mantilla,
if your ardent nanigo blood
hadn't chosen madras
over Spain's airy froth.

You could have shone, shapely,
sobriety in classic mold,
if the gold force of your sun
hadn't ripened your amphora thighs
swelling their forms
wide as water jars.

You could have passed before the world
for cultured and civilized,
if your armpits — flowers of shadow —
didn't spread through the plazas
the pungent odor of onions
your entrails lightly fry.

And this is you, my green Antille,
in an ambivalence over race,
neither this nor that your pedigree
that makes you so Antillean . .
To the rhythm of the drums you dance
your pretty neither this nor that,
one half Spanish,
the other African.