Fen Trolls Haunt the Bell [Today's News Poem, October 24, 2010]

Fen Trolls Haunt the Bell [Today's News Poem, October 24, 2010]

The death tolls
of bell trolls.
Let's march to hell.
Pave it. We'll dwell
where the stone-parches
will match our fine arches.
Listen, this hellhole of stairs
and the best view of a world, which fares
like a fen,
was drained and surrounded with pen,
coated with rubble from vats
then crushed until flat:
it was rushed
and a haunting of will o' wisps brushed
off our pavement of sand
to ring the bell proudly and to strike up the band.

"The death toll from a cholera epidemic in Haiti topped 250 Sunday, and a handful of cases in the country's capital were confirmed, as government officials and aid groups prepared for what they call an inevitable spread of the disease. "
— BETSY MCKAY, The Wall Street Journal, OCTOBER 25, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303864404575572691625613642.html

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Haitian Fright Song [Today's News Poem]

Haitian Fright Song

By Khakjaan Wessington

The Haitian Fight Song
Is curious, because of whom they might fight.
The French,
The Americans,
But mostly themselves
And their denuded dirt.

They were liberated into poverty
As the White Man unburdened himself
Of the people,
While keeping the plantations
And conspiring against voodoo.

A man interviewed said that only the Haitians screamed
During the aftershocks. He said he wanted to emulate
The foreigners. It's not easy to divorce one's self from one's
Animal instincts. To be reptilian where others are mammalian.
To be pitiless in work and to pitilessly extract work.
To fight man and soil
And child and woman
And most of all to fight the self.
To be better than human
To be inhuman.
To dry the ducts of pity
So that when our turn comes
And we are smothered with rubble
And we are trapped beneath our own excrement
Nobody will save us.
Not even ourselves.
And nobody should save us.
I didn't save anyone.
They shouldn't save me.

--

The edit to this poem, in full metered verse, can only be read in the print edition, on sale here:




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