poems in translation
poems in translation
You probably know the quote of Toni Morrison’s, that “all water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”1 In it, this idea of exile, of memory, of a striving for wholeness in the face of loss. That’s something shared by this translation of Jean D’Amérique’s poem commemorating the onset of cholera in Haiti post-2010 earthquake and Danielle Legros Georges’s magisterial poem “Power,” something shared by their work as writers, editors, and politically engaged storyworkers—a reverence for the natural world, their homeland of Haiti, and the sustaining, elemental, profoundly essential power of memory.2 Let us never forget what has been done and what has been lost, they say, and let us remember those who have been there to see and catalogue, to love and mourn it.
This poem appears as “douleur-fleuve” in Jean D’Amerique’s Quelque pays parmi mes plaintes (Cheyne, 2023).
II
river-misery
in memory of the river Artibonite
in which UN soldiers relieved themselves:
birthplace of a cholera epidemic
in Haiti in fall 2010
that killed thousands of Haitians
first chapter: the water
pellucid laid out country the powerful deeps study
in fiscal cahoots with a dream-fish, not too far off
bailed out by a rare peace a couple trees complete,
and when too stoned on light the birds slip off
toward other realms, the commoners take back up
the baton, weaving music out of every glimmer,
plunging head when thirst hits into the liquid prayer
and drinking to abandon being in this silver bed
whose azure hides its most sacred glints: o Artibonite
impossible splendor whose only argument is river
second chapter: diarrhea
the setting up of the final night, general contractor
the United Nations organization, no bid or whisper
of debate, blood work funded by the yankee saber
—shocktroops on loan, your primary mission is
to create stability, let me repeat, to create stability,
the target’s will not worth considering, just attack
the virgin land, you all can dispose of, despoil and
slash flesh down to the barest peace, now onward
soldiers, onward
dark chapter
under rumps unrestrained un-uniformed water runs
the good be done and on comes peace
and you, you local folks, quit those prayers, your gods
exhaust me, I prefer your overflowing cries, so quit
this instant these rituals that spread sobs so widely as
if by some elaborate protocol, a moment of silence
won’t repair the clock inside our emptinesses, look,
look how the river’s laid out forever now, surplus of
tears where so many absences bob
empty chapter
sometimes breath is battened with heavy sleep, and I
see my mom again, grass spread out under solar gold,
and her memory soaked in wreckage returns to bri-
ghten in her blood . . . sometimes, throat unleashed on
the savannahs of an acrid thirst, I see again my mom
the commoner, with a couple final sobs she is
silting the silence, with a blue sky’s hope her wind
ploughs space, but her beats are still clotting up in
the furrow, and cholera the horizon, and cholera
because one day a peace mission, because one day
missionaries of stability, day fouled the river
o Artibonite
o mother, you had us drink the dream raw at the
source, what are you doing now on the bed of your
death, declared where the soldiers fidget
Jean D’Amérique, born in Côte-de-Fer, Haiti, is a poet, playwright, and novelist. He splits his time between Paris, Brussels, and Port-au-Prince. He has published several award-winning collections of poetry and has authored several award-winning plays. His first novel, Soleil à coudre (Actes Sud, 2021), was translated by Thierry Kehou as A Sun to Be Sewn (Other Press, 2023).
Conor Bracken is a poet and translator. His latest translation is of Jean D’Amérique’s Atelier du silence as Workshop of Silence (Vanderbilt, 2025), and his second book of poems, All-American Dad (Bridwell), is due out in fall 2026. He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
[1] Toni Morrison, “The Site of Memory,” in William Zinsser, ed., Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 2nd ed. (Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 99.
[2] Danielle Legros Georges, “Power,” Havard Review Online, 9 May 2023, https://www.harvardreview.org/content/power/.