I suffered from my negritude,
She also from her loneliness,
And we consoled ourselves.
We had to love each other more,
More welded by seeing faces,
Which were only suppressed hatreds.
Disparaging reflections,
For me the negro, and his lover,
How humiliated we were!
"How vicious and vicious this bitch is,
To mate with this race,
Poor uprooted types."
My God that true and noble feelings
Are misunderstood, ignoble world,
How much we had to pay.
So many tears and suffering,
For my very short stay in France,
On the benches of the faculty.
Tired of reproaches and sarcasm,
We came up with the whimsical idea,
In my country, to return.
The reception at my place? Not better,
It was she who was colored,
She was rejected by all.
We held on...two years,
Assuming that in time,
tranquility would return.
It was counting without the madness,
Which is born suddenly in countries,
Because the coup d'etat has struck.
And when the days of rioting came,
This black people, like a pack,
Slaughtered us both.
The crime ? It was misalliance,
Breaking the law, what insolence!
For this we were condemned.
Anomaly, shame of the village
I still see the face,
And the martyrdom of my beloved.
That poor pathetic gaze,
Crushed with big cudgels,
And the vociferous cries.
I was black, she was white,
We met on a Sunday,
But I'm talking to you in the past tense.
We were covered with earth,
For it is to God...of all...The Father,
That our souls have gone.
There, among fields and flowers,
In beauty and happiness,
His angels comforted us.
In heaven, no difference
Race, skin, Africa, France,
It is for all of us, equality.
Is it necessary to die for people to understand,
Men nourished by so much hatred,
That the only noble act is to love?
Why notice on earth,
What fratricidal struggles and misery,
For lives so often cut short?
Our souls are at peace in this place,
By the mercy of God,
United in eternity.
I was black, she was white,
We met on a Sunday,
And our ordeals are over.
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