The Shattered Mirror
Midst the skies of Paradise
Hatched are the green birds
The moment the Restavec dies [1]
Ah! That precipitous glide
Resides within the bird’s
bosom [2]
Forsaken Haitian orphan’s soul
Roaming free the pleasures of
Paradise
Lanterns hanging from the
Throne
Nestling within their light
Basking under the Beloved’s
glance
The Restavec radiating
eternally alive
While the universe enviously
stares upon [3]
While the cosmos helplessly
rushes towards
Look upon the flight-less bird
of Paradise
This day the sullied face of a
Haitian child
Tomorrow the capricious
heavenly flight
Tomorrow supine to our vile
graves you & I
Haiti! Heavens’
broken mirror,
shattered hundred
thousand pieces, each splinter scattered in some street corner, each an
abandoned
Haitian child.
Though the wide-eyed ignorant
revels peeking through the
kaleidoscope of suffering, mine eyes drowned piecing the puzzle
together…
Come my love! Come look upon
the jig sawed Haitian mirror,
the light of Almighty reflecting from the sublime face of Restavec,
that
effulgent reflection of Beloved’s fragrance:
After all
Fell with melancholic precision
The smithereens of ‘once upon
a time’ my heart
Side by side like an
impossible puzzle
Smooth stretch of a mirror
The affliction’s kaleidoscope
Upon which if I look
Behold the beauty of Your
Face!
[1] Restavec in Creole means ‘stay with’ which
is a form of
child labor/slavery where the children are offered to families,
themselves poor,
in return for a home and perhaps some food for the child. This free
labor
system has flourished into a crippling pyramid of failure in Haiti.
Children
are often raped and tortured, numbers in hundreds of thousands. After
they
are of no use the Restavec is abandoned in the streets.
[2] The
green bird and lanterns are imagery I snatch from a
narration from Prophet Mohammad Peace Be Upon Him, with regards to
those who
died or killed on the path of God, click here to read the full
narration #27.
Always for these black
children specially being Haitian a
language of disgust or sympathy has been used. I thought to give them a
prophetic language to honor them in lofty manner worthy of a martyr.
‘Throne’ is the regal throne
of the Lord.
[3] The entire cosmos is an eye thirsting for one
glance of the Beloved. All these movements in space-time and
turbulences of our
hearts are caused by the gravitation pull of the Beloved’s love, which
all
things rushes towards It as thought lovers seeking their Beloved.
Background: Haitian Restavec
lying in streets while people going to work. Please click on the
picture for more info.
©
2003-2002,
Dara Shayda