-- In memoriam for Port-au-Prince

l'ete se faufile entre deux jours
deux jours a vivre
ici on les vit a peine on mal
dans la faim l'ordure la blessure

dans cette ville d'echec et de desastre
cette ville d'ombre et de barbarie
il y a ceux qui crient
ceux qui appellent
ceux qui mendient
et ceux qui prient

la vie est a la pluie
la vie est a detresse
le jour est sans promesse
tout a le gout des larmes

----

summer sidles in between two days
here we say "two days to live"
here, where beset by hunger and grievous pain
we so hardly, so badly live

in this city of calamity and disaster
this city of merciless shadows
there are some who cry
some who invoke the sky
still others implore
and some faithful pray

life feels like it's going to rain
life feels like distress is on the way
days feel empty of promises
and everything tastes like tears

-- For the Haitian schoolchildren who
died under the rubble of "La Promesse"

children die
do not talk to me about prayer
or paradise
talk is cheap
children die
and my anger supercedes my grief
remember
it was a november morning like any other
when the plaster the brick the mortar
came crashing down
children die
under the rubble of the promise
women cry
the air is heavy as lead
the air is filled with dust
we live in heartless times
and children die
looking for paradise

--For Haiti

no one knows the exact number of the dead
not even the storm herself
though her course is charted
and images circle the earth
of wind and rain that hurl and whirl
swallowing everything in their path

(they laid there like dolls
one next to the other they laid there
as if they had been toys discarded in the mud)

how are we not drowned in shame
as they were drowned in mud
how are we not flooded by tears
as they were by the rains

(they were ours
they were yours and mine
yet we let them die)

so i will write a poem
and you will write a letter
and he will send some money
and she will say a prayer

but we will forget as we have forgotten before
we closed our eyes
covered ourselves up
when this island without secrets
this island caught upside down
spread open by the great storm
went belly up
exposing memories and guts

nothing has happened here
it was already nothing
disaster on disaster
mud on mud

(will the drowned ever forgive us
or will they spit back their water at us?)

nothing has happened here
it was already nothing
disaster on disaster
mud on mud

life is split at the seams

on days when all seems dark, when the world pours in and your pain blows words out of my mouth, i look at opened windows and running trains with a craving hard to explain, but i rush by quickly, eyes shut tight, and count my breaths, and when i catch a glimpse of myself, a talking shadow in full light, hair blowing and blind, i must seem, not knowing my left from my right, always lost, but as i stand here, in my age of reckoning, a woman at the end of her history, i tell you i know i have found myself, i have found happiness where i did not seek it and grief has come frequently when i did not expect it, and come to stay, like an unwelcome guest you cannot turn away, and it has marked me, to allow my heart to break with tenderness and i give thanks for the voice i have been given, for the little song i can sing, for the light i can add to everyone else’s, for i have tasted it all, the bitter, the sweet and what was forbidden me, but i am alive, and have learned to live in this world which is beautifully hopeless and hopelessly beautiful, and if i am remembered at all, it will be because whatever else is true or false, and because i have craved its light, i have unflinchingly faced love and embraced it.

underneath the beauty was a rift
in the heart of the land was a rift
and the rift in the land reached the rift in our heart
and we lost our people and the land