This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
At this still hour the self-collected soul
Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there
Of high descent, and more than mortal rank;
An embryo God; a spark of fire divine.
Bio: Esteban Mesa Montejo was a runaway Cuban slave. He told his story to the Cuban ethnologist Miguel Barnet in taped interviews carried out in 1963. Barnet edited the transcripts and published them in 1966, as Biografía de un cimarrón.