Haiti

A black man's hand, its knuckles raw and streaming,

fissures in the nails filled up with desperate redness,

powdered concrete falling from the open palm,

reached up from the soil of Haiti

and tore the ground

like strips of heavily aching gossamer.

The man beneath the hand swallowed buildings, stones, and mothers of men

starving in a language that I did not understand.

Through the lens of weeping eyes,

the West looked on and listened

as the hand became a fist

and struck the ground

beneath its people's feet.

A chasm raced across the earth to meet the sea.

A voice like an abyss cried out:

"

The children who were hungry have filled my mouth,

and their mothers, who found no home in man,

have turned their heads and lain with me.

Their naked fathers ached beneath the sun

till hearts burst and bodies died and fell upon my face.

Here now are more, and what of them?

"