"Enchantment" by Lewis Alexander (in "The New Negro" [1925])
PART I
Night
The moonlight:
Juice flowing from an over-ripe pomegranate
bursting
The cossack-crested palm trees:
motionless
The leopard spotted shade:
inciting fear
silence seeds sown . . .
PART II
Medicine Dance
A body smiling with black beauty Leaping into the air
Around a grotesque hyena-faced monster: The Sorcerer—
A black body—dancing with beauty
Clothed in African moonlight,
Smiling more beauty into its body.
The hyena-faced monster yelps!
Echo!
Silence—
The dance
Leaps—
Twirls—
The twirling body comes to a fall
At the feet of the monster.
Yelps—
Wild—
Terror-filled—
Echo—
The hyena-faced monster jumps
starts,
runs,
chases his own yelps back to the wilderness.
The black body clothed in moonlight
Raises up its head,
Holding a face dancing with delight.
Terror reigns like a new crowned king.
—Lewis Alexander.