Léopold Senghor Dies at 95; Senegal's Poet of Négritude
Senghor's `New York'

New York! At first your
beauty confused me, and your great
longlegged golden girls.

I was so timid at first under your blue
metallic eyes, your frosty smile

So timid. And the disquiet in the
depth of your skyscraper streets
Lifting up owl eyes in the sun's eclipse.

Your sulfurous light and the livid
shafts (their heads dumbfounding the
sky)

Skyscrapers defying cyclones on
their muscles of steel and their
weathered stone skins.

But a fortnight on the bald sidewalks
of Manhattan

— At the end of the third week, the
fever takes you with the pounce of a
jaguar

A fortnight with no well or pasture,
all the birds of the air

Fall suddenly dead below the high
ashes of the terraces.
…
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/21/international/africa/21SENG.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all