Poem Called Haiti
for Edwidge Danticat
Haitians often times make human life seem like hardly more than oh so very many sperm cells, come into being to enter a single swim meet, for but one to be saved, the one who wins, who first touches the egg. The others, expendable, go down the drain. It is because of this self treatment and seeming self view that it is, at times, problematic appreciating the fullness of their humanity.
What they'd subject themselves to, I'd be afraid to. I'd need so many more safeguards in place before I acted, before I moved. Like sperm cells they seem to act in the dark, to move and to go forth like sperm cells, as if blind.
I used to observe tadpoles, in ponds beside the road, on Grand Bahama Island, when I was a teacher there, usually already late, on my way to teach, on my way to school. I'd watch these puddles collect after a down pour, after rain fell. I'd watch them as well fill up with tadpoles.
I used to watch them metamorphose, adding limbs, two and then four but before more than one or two of them became amphibious, sufficiently developed to climb, to crawl from these puddles beside the road, they'd dry up under a thirsty sun and hundreds of tadpoles would dry up and would dry out as well.
About being able to climb up and climb out is what concerns me about Haiti as well. So few comparatively, it seems, in Haiti, get metamorphosed into what is genetically and then socially and otherwise aimed at.
Haiti it seems is the womb out of which they, in great numbers, drain, go down the drain or like those puddles of water, full of tadpoles, which evaporate too soon.
Why when they are born into this world are they not like most of the rest of humanity, on solid ground? They undermine my sense of my own humanity. They have, with the twelfth of January, made the world take note of humanity in its midst, challenged, threatened.
“There but for the grace of God, go I,” said Barak Obama, in a moment of empathy, meaning well. I've been taught by a Catholic priest not to say that, not to think that and to instead understand that no one is excluded or is ever left out of the Grace of God.
What it is about instead though is being one's brother's keeper. How guilty Haiti and Haitians make me feel about the level of humanity I enjoy when so near by, Haitians drown like rats, like so many cock roaches, desperate to get away from Haiti, desperate to make it to greater human dignity across the boarder or upon accessible shores.
What is at the heart of, at the core of Haitian desperation? Is language the root of the problem? With so many and with so many hands, a population of so many millions should be able to build a very splendid city indeed, one the world would envy.
© Obediah Michael Smith, 2010
11:21 a.m. 03.02.10
for Edwidge Danticat
Haitians often times make human life seem like hardly more than oh so very many sperm cells, come into being to enter a single swim meet, for but one to be saved, the one who wins, who first touches the egg. The others, expendable, go down the drain. It is because of this self treatment and seeming self view that it is, at times, problematic appreciating the fullness of their humanity.
What they'd subject themselves to, I'd be afraid to. I'd need so many more safeguards in place before I acted, before I moved. Like sperm cells they seem to act in the dark, to move and to go forth like sperm cells, as if blind.
I used to observe tadpoles, in ponds beside the road, on Grand Bahama Island, when I was a teacher there, usually already late, on my way to teach, on my way to school. I'd watch these puddles collect after a down pour, after rain fell. I'd watch them as well fill up with tadpoles.
I used to watch them metamorphose, adding limbs, two and then four but before more than one or two of them became amphibious, sufficiently developed to climb, to crawl from these puddles beside the road, they'd dry up under a thirsty sun and hundreds of tadpoles would dry up and would dry out as well.
About being able to climb up and climb out is what concerns me about Haiti as well. So few comparatively, it seems, in Haiti, get metamorphosed into what is genetically and then socially and otherwise aimed at.
Haiti it seems is the womb out of which they, in great numbers, drain, go down the drain or like those puddles of water, full of tadpoles, which evaporate too soon.
Why when they are born into this world are they not like most of the rest of humanity, on solid ground? They undermine my sense of my own humanity. They have, with the twelfth of January, made the world take note of humanity in its midst, challenged, threatened.
“There but for the grace of God, go I,” said Barak Obama, in a moment of empathy, meaning well. I've been taught by a Catholic priest not to say that, not to think that and to instead understand that no one is excluded or is ever left out of the Grace of God.
What it is about instead though is being one's brother's keeper. How guilty Haiti and Haitians make me feel about the level of humanity I enjoy when so near by, Haitians drown like rats, like so many cock roaches, desperate to get away from Haiti, desperate to make it to greater human dignity across the boarder or upon accessible shores.
What is at the heart of, at the core of Haitian desperation? Is language the root of the problem? With so many and with so many hands, a population of so many millions should be able to build a very splendid city indeed, one the world would envy.
© Obediah Michael Smith, 2010
11:21 a.m. 03.02.10
posted by Obie Quiet at 12:43 PM
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