TWANBLANN TÈ (TREMBLEMENT DE TERRE, OU LA SEISME)

I

The earth trembled beneath Port-au-Prince
and his faith in the Saints and the Spirits of his Ancestors trembled
then fell, unnerved, among the rubble and the dead
and trembled again….

II

In a city where the dead do not rise,
les zombis notwithstanding,
and the stench is insufferable and suffocating,
the living must rise from the rubble and the dying of a quake
whose aftershocks transcend two centuries
that bespeak the oppression of empires
that have denied them the hand of brotherhood;
aussi bien l’égalité et liberté.
Here, where stars have stripped the hills
of the green beginnings of clear rivers
whose stripes uncoil now, in snakes that flail
with the brown venom of floods,
hope ebbs like blood on screaming earth.

III

Agony
of living death through a loud chasm;
a black hole lost among white stars
to the blue-dark, engorging abyss of 
market economies
are no myth.
No myth, the machetes of les macoutes 
spilling the blood of all their Saints 
(Toussaint’s to Aristide’s faithful)
in a long, long age, shaking faith and drowning the red earth of soul.

Still, the living rise from the hopelessness of their dying….