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Author's note: On January 1st 2003, there appeared an article about the 7,000+
street children that roam Port-au-Prince. Many of them live in the National Cemetary...
a few days later, this poem wrote itself.
Children of the Graves
We're not afraid in here, she said.
The dead won't hurt us
The living do.
My mother died
My father left... I think.
My aunt raised me with a heavy hand
See the scars?
She was trying to burn the willfullness
from me,
but it was deeper than my skin.
We hide among the tombs
Sleep as those in the ground
because adults are afraid to come
at night
They fear the zombies,
but the only living dead, here, are the children.
There are many of us
I do not know us all-
yet we are a family of the young
with ancient souls
and battered, though unconquered spirits.
I am older, she said.
I care for some of the others-
I cradle the newest one
Sing to the lonely one
Teach the pretty one how to close her eyes
and heart
to use the men for money
to feed the rest.
My family changes-
Some move on
Most die
of hunger
of policemen's beatings
of disease
of being trampled by heartless drivers
who didn't want their windshields cleaned
of being sad.
Sometimes, we bury them in looted graves
Rich men's graves
It's fitting.
See the Palace?, she said.
It glows white and powerful
in the moonlight
Are they eating days old mango there?
Did they pluck it from a garbage pile
before a goat could gorge?
Are they burning candle stubs,
vendors' cast offs,
for warmth,
for light,
the oily smoke coating their nostrils and making them cough?
Do they wear their sole possessions
on their backs?
Do they moisten their parched tongues with
gutter flow?
Are they resting among
bones
death
decay?
We do.
No, we are not afraid, she said.
But we are hungry
we are sick
we are orphaned from more
than our own mothers...
You say we are our country's future?
Funny, then, that we live
amongst its decomposing past-
And we know that,
like the flesh made sand again,
we are forgotten in its present.
LM Afonso January 4, 2003
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