Untitled/Halcyon
Untitled
pour épeler ma ville, j'ai compté les arbres que j'ai
croisés dans mes fugues et
s'il y a un oiseau qui chante,
je m'assieds au seuil de
cette ville à moi à venir
dans l'urgence des miracles
avec des feuilles d'automne
qui ne savent plus mourir [End Page 343]
Halcyon
To recipher my city
I lay bare the names
number the trees
I greet on my mad processionalsWhen a bird sings
I sit on her wings,
from her verges,
better enter the fleece
drown in her miraclesAnnihiling death,
I am lanced
by stately leaves
and their forgetting.from I have a tree in my canoe
Rodney Saint-Eloi, a native of Haiti, lives in Montreal, Canada. In 1991, he founded Editions Memoire in Port-au-Prince, which was followed by Memoire d'encrier in Montreal in 2003. He is also a poet and critic of art and literature.
Marie-Ovide Gina Dorcely is a poet, translator, and nonfiction prose writer. She has received awards for her writing from the Cave Canem Foundation and the Breadloaf Writers Conferences. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Caribbean Writer, and The Portable Lower East Side. She was born in Haiti.
