Love Poem For Haiti

One of my sisters sent me the link to this last week; Nelly Lambert, the author, is the daughter-in-law of a friend of ours, she's  a Ph.D. student in English and American literature at Catholic University who lived in Haiti as a child, from 1983-1987. The poem was published last week on Politics Daily. I was so deeply impressed, moved and  delighted by this:  the images, the language, the feeling of the love of a sensual child for the place that formed her, that I wanted to share it here.  Another of my sisters who is a historic preservation architect went to Haiti last week, with a team assessing the historic government buildings for restoration, and her comments to me about the resilience and strength of the Haitian people at this moment in time echo Nelly's words in this poem.  Haiti's people are indeed stronger than her buildings. 

LETTER TO HAITI: A LOVE POEM

Desire....The opposite is death. So do you wonder? How could you possibly wonder!
-Blanche DuBois

Dear Haiti,

I thought I would write you as

A beautiful but destitute woman:

Everyone wanted you; no one would marry you.

No one dared marry you,

Not that you cared for marriage.

But you are not that woman.

So, then I tried Hemingway-

No, better Graham Greene-

Breakfasts of kumquats and rhum-coke calm;

A strange epoch in which time stood still

Save for the slow decay of the gingerbread porch.

But that was all just picked up from what I read later.

Next, I looked for something in your shapes:

There was your physical form, a Siamese twin

Trying to wrest herself free, to be on her own;

Or, there was the way your name sounds like Hades in English,

And in French, like high,

And when you say it, like I.

But no accent or point of view quite captured you.

The truth is I don't remember you in a word or a story.

And, being away from you for so long,

My memory has had to filter through all the talk

Of impatient longings to write your ending.

I thought I would write you tragically,

But that too was a borrowed impulse.

Still, there is a tone, a quality of sound,

Of air, a sensibility that stays with me.

You taught me to see colors

I cannot find anywhere else.

The closest I've come-

A dusty turquoise, let's say-

Is always slightly too muted or too dark.

The pinks are too aggressive - not your pink.

But sometimes, when the daylight is warm and wide,

I'll notice I'm wearing your colors,

Painting the streets with them,

Giving them away to friends.

You are a gorgeous one. Everyone agrees.

I remember your beasts and your flowers,

Though I can't recall their names.

I can still hum pieces of your lullabies,

Though I couldn't sing them from start to end.

Even now I can ask for ice cream in your creole,

But I wouldn't know how to write it down.

And, after all this time, I can still picture

Your steamy mountains,

Your beaches of black sand

Sparkling like powdered onyx,

Your women carrying

Heavy loads on their heads. No hands!

In your care, I learned to do it too.

Now I see you. There you are

Walking up the hill

Balancing a basket of fruit on your head.

You cannot find your children.

You will keep looking, I know.

I was a sensual child in your lap.

We are all like that with you.

We all love to touch your world.

You will keep walking up the hill.

I have seen you do it before.

You are stronger than your buildings.

Your head is level. Your babies are laughing.

(Photo of painting by Carlo Valtrain, Girl With Water Jugs, from  Haitian Art Online.)

Heading For The Hills

In order to get away and stay away for lengthy periods of time from the TV, computer, radio (in the car I listen to NPR all the time), and news of postearthquake Haiti, we spent most of the weekend hiking in the Sandia foothills. Ever since last Tuesday (has it already been an entire week?) I have been utterly compelled to stay connected to every bit of news I can find, and just needed some surcease. Unlike the dead, injured, homeless Haitians, I have the enormous good fortune of being able to seek surcease from my merely virtual connection to this catastrophe.

And as an aside I must say here that if this doesn't make us all stop in our tracks and realize our good fortune to live in this affluent, well-equipped country, what ever will? In 1989 San Francisco suffered an earthquake of a similar magnitude, in which sixty some people were killed, and nearly 4000 injured. Compare the numbers coming out of Haiti now (the estimate of the dead now stands at 200,000) with those, and the mind boggles. I could write an unending post on the tragedy that is Haiti, but other people are doing it elsewhere far better than I could. I tend to be a chronic complainer about many petty things, but please God, I will be able to realize that I actually have next to nothing in my life worthy of complaint.

Back to our escape from the media. I'm still on winter break, and Gail is off on Fridays, the weekend weather was gorgeous, and we had nothing beyond a few minor errands to take care of. So, we got out the guidebooks we've been accumulating since we moved out here, made up some (a lot!) trail mix, and plotted three hikes up into the foothills of the mountains that hover over the eastern edge of the city. We have made lesser attempts to hike a few of the many trails up there, but they were really more on the order of long walks. This time we did three day-hikes, each one longer and more ambitious than the preceding, and felt exuberantly proud of ourselves, not to mention how good we felt just from all that exercise, sunshine and fresh air. I have found the mountains to be a source of healing and comfort ever since the first time we traveled out here, which was just after the death of a very dear friend. The enormity of the space out here in the West, like the enormity of the ocean, makes clear how very small we humans really are - lets me know that I really am (as Lily Tomlin says in The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe,) only a Speck.

The summers are so hot here that the fall and winter are the only times we can bear to do this sort of thing. Plenty of other people hike all year round; our neighbors spend every weekend in the mountains hiking and camping. That's not gonna happen for us, but from now until the spring winds begin scouring us, and the heat starts pounding down, we're going to continue exploring the foothill trails that are so close to town; branching out to some of the closer state parks and some overnight camping as we grow braver. This proximity to natural recreation was one of the main reasons we moved here, besides proximity to the grandchildren in Denver, and it's time to start enjoying it. This weekend a friend is coming from Austin for a visit and our weekend nature adventure will be a birding trip south to the Bosque del Apache NWR. But of that, more later.

Our Ties to Haiti

At the group blog WomenOn, I have posted some links for people looking to donate financially to help with the relief effort in Haiti. However, amazingly enough, over two million in donations for aid to Haiti has already been raised through our mobile phone accounts. Information has spread mainly through word of mouth on the internet social networks; and this method of helping out is easily available to anyone with an account with a major wireless carrier. NYT article with links to all necessary info here.

If, like most Americans, readers only know the contemporary history of this island nation, they probably know it, as Robert Parry notes in the first paragraph of his brief history of our early historical connection with Haiti:

... because of some natural disaster or a violent political upheaval, and the U.S. response is often paternalistic, if not tinged with a racist disdain for the country’s predominantly black population and its seemingly endless failure to escape cycles of crushing poverty.

Parry's article gives us an interesting glimpse of our country's little known early history with Haiti, history of which I was completely unaware. Haiti and America's Historic Debt.

I know of the twentieth century connections, the occupation of Haiti by American forces, from 1915 to 1934, under Woodrow Wilson, and the "peacekeeping" military mission in 1994, under Bill Clinton, but this early history involving Hamilton, Jefferson and Napoleon was entirely unknown. Perhaps at this time of devastating catastrophe, we can finally repay our historic debt to this country whose history began in slavery and bloodshed and continues in poverty and political strife. The current day Bill Clinton feels that there is hope for Haiti, even after this tragedy (What Haiti Needs) Let us hope that he is right.

(Crossposted to WomenOn.)