Dany Laferriere - The Return

I don’t know why

this morning I have such a desire to see

my friend Rodney Saint-Éloi at 554 Bourgeoys Street.

Appreciate the irony of this street name

for a modest left-wing publishing house

in the working-class neighborhood of Pointe-Saint-Charles.

Waiting for me at the top of the steep staircase

Saint-Éloi and his wide smile

with a salmon cooking over low heat

on a bed of thin slices

of onion, tomato, lemon and red pepper.

Hanging on the wall the luminous poems

of Jacques Roumain, the young man who sang

so sadly of the fall of Madrid

with a feminine elegance

that reminds us of Lorca.

Here we are sitting,

Saint-Éloi and me.

Face to face.

Both of us from Haiti.

Him, scarcely five years ago.

Me, nearly thirty-five years back.

Thirty endless winters separate us.

That’s the hard road he’ll have to take.

He arrives just as

I’m leaving.

He’s starting

as I finish.

Already the next generation.

So much time has passed.

One day, before him

will stand another man

who will resemble him

like a younger brother.

And he will feel

the way I do today.

The red sofa where this tall dark-haired girl is sleeping so soundly. The night was eventful. Several empty wine bottles, a make-up case, a black-and-yellow bra. The remains of a meal still strewn across the table. Spices in small bottles. Towels on the bathroom floor. Dirty dishes cluttering the sink. I step onto the little balcony that overlooks the grassless yard. The life of an intellectual in a working-class district.

Tiga paintings on the walls. A photo of the poet Davertige (light-colored suit, black bowler hat, big smile) in the vestibule. His smile beneath the pain of a dandy at rest reminds me of my father. Scattered here and there, the most recent books published by Mémoire d’encrier: between the sheets, under the bed, on the fridge, in the bathroom, even on the range where a Creole-style chicken is simmering.

Exile combined with cold

and loneliness.

One year, in those conditions, counts as two.

My bones have dried out from inside.

Our eyes tired from seeing the same scene.

Our ears weary from hearing the same music.

We are disappointed at having become

what we have become.

And we understand nothing

of this strange transformation

that has occurred without our knowledge.

Exile in time is more pitiless

than exile in space.

I miss

my childhood more intensely

than my country.

I am surrounded by books.

I am falling asleep on my feet.

In my dream I see

my father’s suitcase

tumbling through space.

And his judging eyes

turning slowly in my direction.

One last look out the airplane window.

This cold white city

where I’ve known my strongest passions.

Now ice lives inside me

almost as much as fire.

From the hotel balcony

I watch Port-au-Prince

on the brink of exploding

by the turquoise sea.

In the distance, the island of Gonâve

like a lizard in the sun.

That bird that crosses

my field of vision

so quickly — barely eight seconds.

Here it comes again.

The same one?

As if that mattered.

The young man sweeping

the hotel courtyard so energetically,

so different from the old man yesterday morning,

seems to have his mind elsewhere.

Sweeping, because it lets you dream,

is a subversive activity.

This morning it’s not Césaire

I feel like reading

but Lanza del Vasto

who was able to be satisfied

with a cool glass of water.

I need a man of serenity

not some guy seething with anger.

I don’t want to think.

Just see, hear and feel.

Note it all down before I lose my head,

drunk on this explosion of tropical

colors, smells and tastes.

I haven’t been part of a landscape like this

for so long.

In the slum called Jalousie (because of how close the luxury villas are, which tells us something about the sense of humor you need to live there) the little girl woke up before the others to go fetch water. I follow her with the binoculars the hotel owner lent me. She climbs the mountainside like a young goat, with a plastic bucket on her head and another one in her right hand. I lose sight of her as I scan the neighborhood waking up. There she is again. Her wet dress flat against her thin young body. The guy with the mustache and the tie sipping coffee on his gallery watches her too.

Let us carefully observe the scene.

Close-up on the face of the mustached guy.

His intense concentration

on the dance of the girl’s hips.

The slightest movement of that wonderfully supple body

is absorbed by his greedy little eyes.

The nose awakens to the scent.

The cat leaps.

Claws buried in the back of her neck.

The girl’s arched back.

Not even a cry.

Everything happened

in his head

between two sips of coffee.

I sit on the veranda

and gently place the binoculars

at the foot of the chair.

Warmed by the sun

already strong at six in the morning

I soon slip into sleep

both light and deep.

Almost asphyxiated

by the smell of warm blood

that goes to my head.

The butcher is cutting

beneath my window.

The machete whistles.

A red rainbow in the air.

The cut throat of a young goat.

The animal seems to smile in its pain.

Its eyes, soft green, find mine.

What is there beyond such sweetness?

Its neck breaks

like a cane field bent low by the breeze.

Behind me the owner

smiles with her eyes.

Her long experience

of pain

should be taught

in these days

when we learn everything

except how to face

the storms of life.

I step into the street

to bathe

in the human river

where more than one swimmer drowns

each day.

The crowd chews over the naïve fresh meat

of all those exiles who hope to recover

the years of absence in their energy.

I’m neither the first nor the last.

On the sidewalks.

In the parks.

In the middle of the street.

Everyone buying.

Everyone selling.

They try to trick poverty

through constant movement.

My eyes take in the scene.

Peasants listening to their transistors.

Hoodlums on motorbikes.

Girls working the street by the hotel.

The music of flies

above green mud.

Two bureaucrats slowly crossing the park.

Zoom in on that girl laughing on the sidewalk across the street with a cell phone jammed in her ear. A car stops next to her. Strident honking — as if the driver’s hand were stuck on the horn. The girl pretends not to hear. The driver goes on his way. Laughter from the fruit vendors who witness the scene.

Primary colors.

Naïve motifs.

Childlike vibrations.

No space left empty.

Everything full to the brim.

The first tear will cause

this river of pain in which

people drown, laughing, to

overflow.

Proud carriage.

Empty belly.

The moral elegance of the girl

who walks past me

for the third time in five minutes.

Without a look in my direction.

Attentive to my slightest move.

Have you ever considered a city

of more than two million people

half of whom are literally starving to death?