The African Mother - Francisco Acuña de Figueroa

Tirai-je enfans de la rive africaine.

    Qui cultivent pour nous la terre americaine?

Differents de couleur, ils ont les mêmes droits;

    Vous-mêmes contres vous les armez de vos lois.

      —Delille, Malheur et Pitie, Chant I.

“And hast thou sped upon the ocean wind,

     Say, cruel pirate, hast thou come for this?

                  Not to leave one behind.

To rob my humble home of all its bliss?

     Come back and look into my cabin door

                  And find me there alone.

Their parting footsteps will return no more;

All of my own are gone, forever gone.

                  Husband and children taken

                  And only I forsaken!

O bear me after them, thou iron heart,

     And to toil with them, I will be thy slave!

                  Or if death be their part,

Cast us together in an unknown grave.

But why pray I to thee, by prayer unmoved?

     Thou hast no children, thou has never loved.

“Free waves their flag, the golden sun displaying

        Celestial globe on skies of heavenly blue!

                  The sportive breezes straying,

Waft on our sight the wonder strange and new;

        While the relentless crew

Dart like wild beasts on weaker creatures preying.

        Darken, thou sun, thy fiery light,

And die away in black eternal night.

“What see I here? his quiver and his bow

        Shattered and useless on the trampled sand?

. . . . . . . My hero! Well I know

        They were not torn from unresisting hand.

But these with magic art

                  Can grasp the lightning’s dart

And wake the thunder clap at their command.”

        Some poor relief to find,

So wailed in grief the mourner left behind.

        They heeded not her accents of despair;

A feeble outcast worth no robber’s care.

        And full in view, with every sail unfurled

The Eagle spread her pinions to the air,

        And soared away into the western world.

        Chained in the hold beneath,

        The captives gasped for breath,

And spent their strength in vainly wasted strife,

        A groaning heap of mingled death and life.

While from her hut under the mango shade,

        The childless mother and the widowed wife

Watched the tall poop on the horizon fade.

---

Francisco [Esteban] Acuña de Figueroa (1791 - 1862) Uruguay

Translated by Agnes Blake Poor

Source: Pan-American Poems: An Anthology, by Agnes Blake Poor, The Gorham Press, 1918.