Sunrise in Senegambia
Emilio Alzueta
The ocean’s light pouring through,
upriver shines
Star-glittering waves as a new, burnished
canvas
Blue, yellow boats,
with crimson prows and rows
Colors
still hidden in the seed of the morning
Before dawn ploughing the ocean
with a tattered sail
Before time,
at that instant before the world’s first moment
A horse sounds on the hushed,
reverberating beach
You say
I feel it galloping on my chest and my hands
Perhaps you still don’t know
that you are different from the air
Fish turn gold on your back while you are whispering
words
Like sea-currents,
perhaps it’s the river that joins us
From its faraway source
under the desert’s skin
What brings the wind just now,
the dry minaret’s mud
But the voice of Bilal, the Abyssinian,
night’s song
Which is the morning’s light,
the awakening of birds
A rush mat on the dirt for the dance
of remembrance
With my brothers,
black skin shining through white jellabas
You say
I know man’s prayer is the worship of the ocean
Perhaps one day the sunrise will burst my eyes
to see.