{"id":2880,"date":"2010-01-13T09:50:22","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T14:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=2880"},"modified":"2010-01-13T09:50:22","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T14:50:22","slug":"epic-debris-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/epic-debris-haiti\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic Debris: Haiti"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Eerie feeling last night: had an email in the late afternoon from Claude Pierre<\/strong>, the Haitian poet, & just as I started to read & respond, the radio brought news of the earthquake. Communications seem to be down & I haven’t heard back.\u00a0 I hope Claude Pierre, and my New York friend Thomas Spears who was visiting with Claude Pierre are okay. I wish everybody were okay, but… Good pieces on Haiti by Joel Dreyfuss, among them one called “Saving Haiti: Seeking hope for my native land,” can be found here<\/a>, on The Root<\/a> site. Here is the original & my quick translation of the “epilogue” to Claude Pierre’s poem “Epic Debris… for my Island in Danger;” <\/strong>you can read the whole poem and hear Claude Pierre read it here<\/a>.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00c9pilogue<\/h3>\n

R\u00eaver la vie,
\nune longue promenade,
\nun bivouac de r\u00e9cr\u00e9ation\u00a0;
\nd\u00e9chirer les voiles, traverser la terre
\ncomme une \u00e9cluse
\nd\u00e9cor\u00e9e aux couleurs du temps,
\njouir des lactescences de lune, des chatoiements
\nd\u2019arc en ciel,
\npaver d\u2019ombrages, les bras de mer
\nd\u2019un continent \u00e0 l\u2019autre,
\ntourner \u00e0 loisir, les manettes du vent,
\nde sorte que les p\u00f4les m\u00e9langent
\nleurs souffles
\net qu\u2019on parcoure d\u2019un pont \u00e0 l\u2019autre,
\nd\u2019une \u00eele \u00e0 l\u2019autre, dans le fr\u00e9missement des fronti\u00e8res,
\ntoujours le m\u00eame climat d\u2019apaisement\u00a0;
\ncirculer sans papier, sans interrogatoire,
\nsans pagne ni manteau,
\nnus, en toute libert\u00e9.<\/p>\n

La mappemonde enfin,
\nprenant le temps d\u2019\u00e9toffer ses arbres, pourl\u00e9cher
\nses oasis, les fronti\u00e8res s\u2019aboliront d\u2019elles-m\u00eames
\ndans la d\u00e9route des duels,
\nla r\u00e9vocation des \u00e9dits
\nsans tortures ni famine.<\/p>\n

RESPECTS ! ! !<\/p>\n

Epilogue<\/h3>\n

To dream life,
\na long leisurely walk,
\na recreational bivouac;
\nto tear the veils, to traverse earth
\nlike a tide gate
\nfestooned with the colors of time,
\nto take pleasure in the moon’s lactescences, the rainbows’
\nsparkle and shimmer,
\nto pave with shade, the arms of the sea
\nfrom one continent to the other,
\nat one’s pleasure to turn the wind’s joysticks,
\nso that the poles may mingle
\ntheir breaths
\nso that one may travel from bridge to bridge,
\nfrom island to island, in the quivering of the borders,
\nalways in the same clime of appeasement;
\n& circulate without papers, without cross-examinations,
\nwith neither loincloth nor coat,
\nnaked, in complete freedom.<\/p>\n

The mappa mundi, finally,
\ntaking the time to flesh out its trees, to lick clean
\nits oases, the borders will abolish themseves
\nin the duels’ rout,
\nthe revocation of edicts
\nwithout torture, without famine.<\/p>\n

RESPECT ! ! !<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eerie feeling last night: had an email in the late afternoon from Claude Pierre, the Haitian poet, & just as I started to read & respond, the radio brought news of the earthquake. Communications...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,91,103],"tags":[248,1719],"class_list":["post-2880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-disaster","category-poetry","category-translation","tag-claude-pierre","tag-haiti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}