AREITO FOR WINNIE TILIN
For the voice of Queen Anacaona, Haiti’s ancestral mother
Winnie Tilin, 18 months
Heroic Haitian Child
As proclaimed by your uncle Franz
Lone survivor
Of your line
Pearl of Hispaniola
Daughter of the daughters of Queen Anacaona
You now survey us serenely
With the regal glance
Of one who stands beyond good and evil.
Black rosebud blooming from the twisted entrails of the earth
For you the ancestral mothers have created
A coffer of precious air
Just like the one that hid the jewels
Stolen by the old time buccaneers
Of Bertrand D’Orgeon, the one whose
Tobacco plantations
Needed strong, black hands.
And now you observe us quietly and do not scream
While the white hands of an all-male
Australian television troupe
Act as midwife
And all the saints
Of Toussaint L’Overture
The Black Jacobin
Bow to you.
Rejoice in their presence
While the burials linger on
And slowly nocturnal chants rise among the evacuees
Descendants of black rebel slaves
Who bivouac with the souls of the Taino
Chasing away with their Creole freedom songs
Once broadcast on agronomist Jean Dominique’s radio
The demons of the West breathing out
Of airport runways
As in olden days they used to from caravels
Docked at Mole Saint Nicole
From which many centuries later
The wretched of the earth took sail
In make-do vessels
Just to be thrown back to the sharks by “maritime interdictions”
a.k.a. in other countries with the imaginative term “push-backs”.
Sharks, tiburones, they too with strange names
Like Papa Doc and Baby Doc while a priest
Who beat the drum of justice
Elected by public acclaim
Was declared insane
By the nearby hegemonic power
And forced
He, the President of what had been
180 years before
The first black republic
To seek asylum in the last
Nation to free itself of apartheid.
Spit on that black water
The Blackwater
That now in the airport
Is put in plastic bottles
To be handed out as it was in Bazra
As it was handed out to all the saints of New Orleans
Who were taking shelter on rooftops with their music
It’s being handed out by the same old wolves
Dressed in sheeps’ clothing
Not even a Nobel Peace Prize
Nor donning a charity cloak
Can cleanse their soul.
While people are dying of thirst
Waiting for the right security conditions
While pillagers are laughing in their glass palaces
And journalists are crying out “Looter!”
If a starving wretch
Dares grab a piece of bread
Sticking out of the ruins of a supermarket.
May the bright white rompers
And diaper
You were lovingly wrapped in by ta maman
Three days before she merged her spirit
With those of her ancestors
Shine a stunning light on the half disclosed plots
Of those who ply with ferocious mildness
The heinous trade
Of Rubble Banker.