A DROUGHT OF TEARS
by Thelma T. Reyna

“I’m crying in my head, but if I let
tears come out, they won’t stop.”
                    --Jean Exeme Lundy
                 Haiti translator*

                Haiti fears to open the dams of mourning,
                of keening for kin taken cruelly away,

                so tears are absent, invisible, mere phantoms
                of grief dessicated by decades of despair
                and the monstrous rumble in split earth.

                Cry, Haiti, cry! Open your mouths
                to holler redly in dusty air, to
                shout names of your beloved lost, to
                enumerate dead you’ve buried in silence.

                Cry, Haiti, cry! Open your hearts
                to pain made palpable with flowing
                tears.  Let scarring start in your bosom
                so burdens can be lightened, dusky
                days brightened, catharsis enclosing
                your sorrows like hands cupped to
                capture your weeping.

* * * * *
* Reported in New York Times online (January 31, 2010).  This poem was published in the anthology, Vwa: Voices of Haiti, edited by Lisa Marie Basile (2010)