We Still Dream Again And Again Of Haiti

We still dream again and again of Ayiti

A land of hundreds of dreams

A country without truce

A land of doleful and moonlit nightmares

A lost tropical haven of uproar, havoc and chaos

We dream of this once super pretty pearly country

Where the flowers were the most exotic and beautiful

Where the women were the most vivacious and stylish

And the birds hummed and sang better than elsewhere

An oasis where we dreamed of a perfect and inconceivable happiness.

Ayiti, Haiti, a land of tropical caresses

Ayiti, Hispaniola, a land of unmatched sadness

Ayiti, Quiesqueya, a country in tremendous distress

Ayiti, Bohio, land of a thousand and one tresses

God, we still dream of this unfamiliar and funny paradise

It’s a humongous soil that trembles and burns with madness

Where in the evening, the jasmine aura perfumed Mother Nature

Oh! We’re always thinking and pondering about this oasis of adventure.

Ayiti, a land of nonsensical hate

Ayiti, a land of excruciating pain

Ayiti, a land of immeasurable suffering

Ayiti, a country of sheer pliancy

Ayiti, a country of special Heroes

Ayiti, a country of callous zeroes

Ayiti is a land of invisible volcanic fires where blood flows

From the top of the Boutilier hills to the smoked region of La Saline

These are the anathemas of Jean-Jacques Dessalines

This is the price that Haitians pay for blaspheming and assassinating

The biological father of the Motherland. Oh! It's a heart-wrenching debt

Where interests accrue and increase daily until a quasi-eternity

Ayiti, a country where vicious and dishonorable thugs are capable

Of committing never-imagined heinous and odious crimes

Ayiti, a country without truce

Ayiti, a land of moonlit and starless nightmares

Ayiti, a land of countless emotional dreams

Ayiti, a land of non-stop hollow brags and brawls

Ayiti, a country where people die for nothing

Like flies, mosquitoes, bed bugs, cats, rats, mice or dogs

Ayiti, Haiti we still dream of the past, the once beautiful country

That her own crazed children have sold for nothing and betrayed

To please the disguised priests of Judas. Ayiti, a small lot of sand and land

Where corpses and dead bones are ubiquitous, it's a vast cemetery

Which rejects no one:  the rich guilty as well as the destitute innocent.

Haiti, a land of obvious dishonesty

Haiti, a land of incomparable bravery

Haiti, a land of onomatopoetic beats

Haiti, a land of kaleidoscopic feasts

Haiti, a land of forgotten respect and incense

Haiti, a land of unheard peace

Ayiti, Haiti is a funnel that would never be satiated with blood

And where waves of tears wash the sidewalks and the cries deafened

The swollen bullies. Grieving women lost their voices due to incessant cries

Children rushed to grow up to face countless habitual, venial and mortal vices

And the shenanigans, who are professional liars, wait for just the perfect occasions

Ayiti, a country where hope is as slow as a dormant and inebriated turtle

Ayiti, a country where everyone either has dry or wet tears in their eyes

Ayiti, a country where water of the banks is sourly tasteless, choleric and murky

Ayiti, a country where too many good souls die sporadically

Countless home birds have also stopped humming or singing

Including the most robust, potent or super-manned roosters on the rosters

Ayiti is a country of division, corruption and obliteration

Where strength does not come from eating onions or forming union

But from heavy deadly weapons and aliens coming from abroad

From far-away pariahic superpowers that put all lives in danger

Ayiti, Bohio, land of heat, is waging a senseless and criminal war

Darn, Haiti is fighting countless wars within. Lord darn, Ayiti, Haiti, formerly

The pearl and the spectral curl of the West Indies, is now a shame

For all those who adore her. This is no laughing matter. We dismantled

Vandalized, plundered and slapped this young struggling country

Every second of the holy day. Oh! Ayiti. Yes, Haiti

A tiny nation with a beautiful bluish and clear ocean

Ayiti, the land of visible and invisible smokes and fires

Oh! It's snowing. You better believe me. Oh! And it's raining

On Ayiti, a land of thousands of kaleidoscopic dreams

A country that has suffered, cried and almost died

A country where insecurity, hypocrisy, treachery, trickery and fear

Rule or govern. Oh! Ayiti, the land of the lonely martyrs

Listen to the tam tam of the evildoers! They burned and they shot

They stole and they killed Haiti again and again. The poor gendarmes are absent

Real purple blood is in the streets and small red puddles are on the soiled sidewalks

Oh! Nights and days of nightmares, we still dream, again and again of a martyred Ayiti

Which won’t die, once our oasis, our country, our haven, our paradise.

P.S. Translation of ‘Nous Rêvons, Encore Et Encore D’Haïti’ by Hébert Logerie.

Copyright © February 2020, Hebert Logerie, All Rights Reserved

Hébert Logerie is the author of several collections of poems.