Weekly Poem: 'Centuries of Ashes'

**By Patrick Sylvain** The shard-like anger of Port-au-Prince Will slice through social veins And harvest life with a Machete. Two centuries of ashes and blind privilege Hoarding in palaces, suffusing fetidness With extraneous air-freshners. Two centuries of ashes and cruelty Has been mastered with a surgeon's Precision. We laugh as we bleed. Despite drunken drums And frolicsome hips, Shard-like anger will rankle And stream through peasant fields, Shanty towns and regal abodes the way Red ants march on pressed sugarcanes. Despite drunken drums and frolicsome hips, Drifting angels will wing themselves away The way bats flock out of dark caves. _--September 2005._   Patrick Sylvain is a Haitian-American writer, essayist and poet, and instructor of Haitian language and culture at "Brown University's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.":http://www.watsoninstitute.org/clacs/ He has been published in several anthologies, magazines and reviews, including African American Review, Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Haitian Times and Ploughshares. His latest book, "Love, Lust & Loss/ Lanmou, anvi ak pedans," was published by Memoire d'Encrier in October 2005. Read his poem, "'Ports of Sorrow,'":http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2010/01/weekly-poem-ports-of-sorrow.html which we featured in Art Beat last week.