Elegy for Haiti
They are all no more: and we hear you weep,
Howling over your children in the streets.
Yet who can comfort you, explain this mess?
They lie in makeshift tombs, your children are
Dead.
The ground rolled as the deep beneath their feet,
And now you sink in disconsolate grief,
In stares, empty faces, and hollow cheeks,
You’re cursed by death to breathe another week.
Will you hate us then, with our cushioned lives?
Who live in plenty and who sleep at night?
For chaos has raped your young, needy world,
As creation descends into a swirl
Of blackened voids and diabolical
Orgies consummating torments of old.
Before a Word spoke to restrain this crime,
Now over silence reigns horrific cries.
For they have all gone into a world of
Dust,
Your precious ones, the children you love most.
Ripped from your womb and sown into rubble:
A belly of clay where they first huddled.
She quakes with pangs as if giving them back,
But straining, sweating, she yields only cracks.
How long, by God, must we wait for their birth?
For three days more will leave her warped, unnerved,
In some state of woe that stings beyond time,
Where all hope has gone to the muck and grime.
So bring them back in the richness of youth,
Her daughters and sons, so that she may soothe
Those who have faced death and oblivion.
And we ourselves must groan for redemption,
Not ours, but yours, their mother incarnate,
Who still lives, and dies, in the fleshly state,
With each new tear and nightmare memory.
Beloved, cry, and please just simply be,
For we alone have the leisure to pray,
And the poise to plead with an untried faith.
Yet will this comfort, you so long ignored?
They are still dead and the land is still sore.
