04-04-2026, 03:47 PM
Haiti
Mountains piled upon mountains formed his cage,
the shackles about his ankles basalt, granite
about his wrists, yet nothing to stop his mouth.
His shouts were heard at first by enslaved natives
and then, as war and sickness took their toll,
by those black bodies brought as their replacement.
Sugar became a poison. Whatever syrup
trickled into his tomb oozed green and bitter:
through the white man's blood alone would he know sweetness.
Thus thirteen years of fight and hundreds of thousands
slaughtered on either side struck as a hammer
against his chains, his captors' craft alone
preventing full freedom, spinning from silver and gold
another accursed mountain: a leaden ransom
so huge that the giant continues to lie inhumed
as still his people suffer to be so poor.
Mountains piled upon mountains formed his cage,
the shackles about his ankles basalt, granite
about his wrists, yet nothing to stop his mouth.
His shouts were heard at first by enslaved natives
and then, as war and sickness took their toll,
by those black bodies brought as their replacement.
Sugar became a poison. Whatever syrup
trickled into his tomb oozed green and bitter:
through the white man's blood alone would he know sweetness.
Thus thirteen years of fight and hundreds of thousands
slaughtered on either side struck as a hammer
against his chains, his captors' craft alone
preventing full freedom, spinning from silver and gold
another accursed mountain: a leaden ransom
so huge that the giant continues to lie inhumed
as still his people suffer to be so poor.