A Perspective From Haiti

In thirty five seconds You may see eternity clear as day Quick as a flash and passing away Too fast for opinions To contend for understanding. too Fast to contend for judgment. Rue It in flash, for we see Eight thousand alive no more. All Monuments, brick and buildings fall And plans brings misery. What is our history Then, the spell of freedom and blood Bled path to squirming from the mud? What is our anxiety For, tomorrow in the fishnet bleating For its own liberation from our thinking Shall we have nothing More than cycles always of beginnings Hope carved from the flesh of sufferings? I pray for better wing. For better Toussaint Today, I would dig rubble and prison Now, rescue with more than my orison From leashed restraint The shriveled archipelago from debris Of the same Napoleanic thin pedigree Every stream get along In its own current, each heart keep pace For its own glory, so let it be for this race Sing not here their exotic song. Time is brief, and life is fleet In thirty five seconds nothing stands the same Except the scent of cordite and the flame No one hit the key delete And none can hit the key return, they are gone Eight thousand characters swept by dawn And in the void I, child Of perennial desolation, seek beyond wisdom The old certainty of an unshakable kingdom With brave Haiti reconciled