January 12, 2010, Haiti, by John Robert Lee

Haitian Woman Pulled From Rubble, by US Navy: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg via Wikimedia Commons.

January 12th 2010, Haiti

Madonna of Port-au-Prince

You who look like Alice Your eyes red with shattered plaster and weeping 
Your full lips bruised with dirt 
Your hairpiece of locks slipping back like a cowl 
The powder dusting your oval cheeks is grey concrete — 
If the rest of you was not buried under rocks of blasted wall 
And the figure in the foreground was not blood splattered 
And someone’s leg was not trapped behind you, 
You could have been a pretty girl 
With sand on your bare arms 
Writing your name on a shell 
On some beach off Les Cayes— 
You who look like Alice 
Another lost girl I used to know, 
Not an ikon’s model
On a chapel wall in Jacmel 
But a strange Madonna anyhow 
Flat on the scattered masonry 
Sans enfant, or enfant gone from your hands 
To the devouring earth — 
The ikon herself 
Impassive Erzulie, gazing through your Carib face 
From a palette of pixels 
Framing now before me.

Haitian Woman, By MCCS Spike Call [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Maman


Did you find him, maman, the old man, 
Or was it the grandchild left in your care for the day, 
Or, in the catastrophe behind you, 
The daughter who was setting your supper,
Or perhaps your friend, having a Dominican ponche with you? 
Your long arms, maman, are bathed in the white dust of disastrous city-fall, 
Your fingers are exhausted from their frantic and futile search for bones, 
For hair, for a belt or a bodice, 
For a baby, a baby who was impossibly there, 
Gurgling at her spoon 
Teasing your heart, 
And you singing a lullaby, “Haiti Cherie” 
Haiti beloved, beloved child, 
Gone child, gone with the walls, the debris, the tranblanterre and the lavalas, 
Gone from your arms, from your keening, scrabbling fingers 
Despairing under block, under board, under broken back 
And the child disparu, taken — 
Or was it your friend from Cap Haitien, 
Or the daughter who shared your name, 
Or the old man — companion of your days, 
Comrade of sleepless hours, keeper of your young heart 
Comforter of those fallen breasts 
Fallen under your torn chemise 
Fallen with the roofs and the windows and the President’s house 
Fallen with the broken routes of Port-au-Prince Fallen and forlorn, Haiti Cherie?

Notre Dame Catholic Cathedral in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by Marco Dormino for United Nations.

Cathedral

The ionic columns hold nothing up 
Not the twin cupolas that welcomed mariners to Port-au-Prince 
Not the grand round windows of stained-glass ikons 
Not the novenas of those who died in the fallen girders, 
Unless you count the blue dome of vacant air 
The ruined, ruined facades 
The hovering stench — 
Has Boukman triumphed? 
Do Legba and Ghede aka Baron Samedi mount the buried altars? 
Does Ogoun lie entombed in this broken peristyle? 
Do these curious questions matter to the houngan 
Crying down the mess of fallen masonry 
To touch his daughter’s ears?--
Outside the shattered cathedral 
The women kneeling in the dust 
Raise rosaries to the familiar Haitian sky 
And lift their psalms 
Past the ionic columns 
That hold nothing up.

Painting, by Casimir Joseph (Haiti). Contemporary.

At Capernaum, Boats

“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who 
sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” – Matthew 4:16.

This, the Port of the boat people 
This, the Port of their Prince 
Home-harbour safe 
Docks of sails in sunset--
This is the Port of the boat people 
After Dessalines and Duvalier, HIV and cholera 
After tornado and tremblor 
The Gadarene adventure and their Bay of Pigs 
Canoewrecks off Florida, the invading boots of marines 
From caravel to carrier— 
After the desolate cities of my pilgrimage 
And diverse tribulations 
From deserts and catacombs to creole favelas, 
These crosses of masts under the purpling evening 
Their sails folding like seamless robes
The people neither coming nor going Home-harbour safe 
Intransit to the undying lands of their Prince 
Who loved fishermen
Who slept in their boats 
Roped their storms to His peace 
And encompassed their little faith 
With His incomprehensible love 
Home harbour safe— 
At Capernaum, boats 
The Port of the boat people 
The Port of our Prince.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, by Caravaggio (Italy), 1602.

In Caravaggio’s Ikon 

In Caravaggio’s ikon of Thomas seeing Christ
all eyes are locked to the doubter’s firm finger 
poking around the torn flesh, under

the strong hand of the Carpenter. Thomas, 
Apostle to our secular, mocking, murderous 
new age, meeting his worst-case scenario

with the firm grit of flesh under his thumb 
that index of incarnation— incarnation, Immanuel 
God is with us — under the impossible rubble

as we claw at the unimaginable earthfall, Immanuel— 
over the body of someone’s son fallen in crossfire 
in shrieking shadowlands of betrayal

through terminal disorientation of disease, Immanuel. 
Because that wound is real, the death was certain 
here, beyond reason, beyond the apocalypse

of private disasters, is something else 
is Life beyond life, beyond heartbreak 
beyond assassination, beyond the tremblor

at 3 in the afternoon, beyond the amnesiac cancer of the mind. 
Here, under our finger, is faith, here is hope, 
and He asks us, against the brutal heel on the locked door

the harsh fist of imploding earth 
the shroud covered bier— 
“Love one another.”

​John Robert Lee

JOHN ROBERT LEE (b. St. Lucia 1948) has published several collections of poetry. His short stories and poems have been widely anthologised. His reviews and columns have appeared with regularity in newspapers, local and regional. He has also produced and presented radio and television programmes in St. Lucia for many years. His books include Saint Lucian (1988), Artefacts (2000), Canticles (2007), Elemental (2008), Sighting (2013), City Remembrances (2016). He compiled and edited Roseau Valley and other poems for Brother George Odlum (2003), Bibliography of Saint Lucian Creative Writing 1948-2013 (2013); he co-edited Saint Lucian Literature and Theatre: an anthology of reviews (2006) with fellow St. Lucian poet Kendel Hippolyte and co-edited Sent Lisi: poems and art of Saint Lucia (2014) with Kendel Hippolyte, Jane King and Vladimir Lucien.

Editor's note: Some of the photos shown with John Robert Lee's Haiti earthquake sequence were not the original photos that he was inspired by. Where unable to obtain permission to show specific photographs, Ekphrastic has substituted public domain imagery that is related to the pieces. In this case, the author and editor believe the subject matter is so important and timely again that selecting related imagery was the best option. Both paintings are the original inspiration.