Haïti

Poetry is just the right thing to mark certain times in life, and this [the earthquake in Haïti] is one of them. Roger McGough

Port-au-Prince, by Elaine Feinstein

Hell has many landscapes: some torments
men inflict on one another, others we acknowledge as natural accidents. The images of Port au Prince enter
our homes each night: collapsing houses, smashed limbs, corpses, broken girders, air pockets where a man may lie
for ten days unheard, and when found still die. A child in the rubble with no mother, and no shelter. The trucks run out of water.
Poor city of the first Black independence, Creole children of slavery and sugar-cane, victims of Papa Doc and Voodoo! Yes,
there will be looting and violence; but after so often failing in compassion if we continue, nevertheless, to fly in
tents and medicine, who knows, it might redeem the human race


Lament, by Gillian Clarke

For the earth that shivered its skin like an old horse
For the shout of the sun, of the earth as it broke its heart
For the white palace that fell into itself like snow
For the hospital, for its rows of white graves
For the cathedral that folded on emptiness
calling God's name as it went
For its psalms of sorrow, the prayers of the living and dead
For each house crushed with its cots and cushions and cups
cooking pots pressed between pages of stone
For the small lung of air that kept someone alive
For the rescuer's hand reaching into the void
For the slip of a life from its grip
For the smile of daylight on a woman's face
For her daughter dead in the dark
For the baby born in the rubble
For tomorrow's whistling workmen
with their hods of bricks
For scaffolding and walls rising from the grave
over rosaries of bones


Séisme, par Aimé Césaire

Tant de grands pans de rêve
de parties d’intimes patries
effondrées
tombées vides et le sillage sali sonore de l’idée
et nous deux ? quoi nous deux ?
A peu près l’histoire de la famille rescapée du désastre:
“Dans l’odeur de vieille couleuvre de nos sangs nous fuyions
la vallée, le village nous poursuivait avec sur nos talons des lions de pierre rugissants.”
Sommeil, mauvais sommeil, mauvais réveil du coeur
le tien sur le mien vaisselle ébréchée empilée dans le creux tanguant
des méridiens.
Essayer des mots ? Leur frottement pour conjurer l’informe comme les insectes de nuit
leurs élytres de démence ?
Pris pris pris hors mensonge pris
pris pris pris
rôlés précipités
selon rien

sinon l’abrupte persistance mal lue
de nos vrais noms, nos noms miraculeux
jusqu’ici dans la réserve d’un oubli
gîtant.