Requiem for Haiti – A Prelude
Requiem for Haiti – A Prelude
The skin of my brothers burn,
blistering hissing spitting
bursting a final gasp of air
a death rattle a crack of sap.
My sister burns into a blackened
corpse, her green body curling
into a carbon galaxy shimmering
opaque starless and alone.
A tree speaks differently than a man,
the wind the rustle the leaves are
thoughts and whispers and memories.
A broken thorn pleads;
‘Why do you cut?’
‘Why do you smash us?’
‘Have you no pity in you?’
Under a cold gray sky my Mother weeps
her muddy shoulders tremble, pockmarked
by greed, poverty and an absent god.
Excerpt from ‘Wasteland: Charcoal Production in Haiti’, written two days before the earthquake.