Lakansyèl - Émile Roumer

In the darkest of nights,
A rainbow emerges,
Arching across the sky,
A symbol of hope.

Egg Of Light - Frankétienne

Every day I employ the dialect of mad cyclones.
I speak the lunacy of contrary winds.
Every evening I use the patois of furious rains.
I say the fury of water is spilling over.
Every night I talk the language of hysterical tempests
to the Caribbean islands. I speak the hysteria of the sea in rut.

When the tom-tom beats - Jacques Roumain

My heart trembles in the shadows

like a face reflected in troubled water.

My City - Jean D’Amérique

                                for a city whose wound is mine

the streets

are nameless

because of traveling crime

a tower of  flames at its back, my city binges on

fresh canons, sings of a life that sags on the page,

it watches humans fall as if it’s watching cascades

of piss

Guinea - Jacques Roumain

It’s the long road to Guinea

death takes you down.

Here are the boughs, the trees, the forest.

Listen to the sound of the wind in its long hair

            of eternal night.

Cannibal - Léon Laleau

This savage wish on certain days

To mingle blows and blood

With love's motions,

where our protest sound - Lenelle Moïse

jazz is underwater

vodou atlantis mute

aborted ultrasound

fetal fish in flood

 

the skin I love - Louis-Philippe Dalembert

I love skin

cracked skin

stretch-marked skin

Dialect of Hurricanes - Frankétienne

          Every day I use the dialect of lunatic hurricanes.
I speak the madness of clashing winds.

The Peasant Declares His Love - Émile Roumer

High-yellow of my heart, with breasts like tangerines,
you taste better to me than eggplant stuffed with crab,