Silence in spring, absence of birdsong.
No homes for wildlife, nature retreats.
Pavements bake, no respite from the heat,
no shade from trees on hot streets.
Flash floods as rain runs off landscape paved over,
water rises, drains and sewers overflow.
Soil washes into rivers, waters silt brown. Wetlands
drained, nothing to hinder rain’s rapid overland flow.
With no deep roots, the soil depletes.
How many harvests are left for crops’ green tendrils to unfurl?
Damaged hillsides, bare soil. Rain brings erosion,
scars run deep. Dust storms swirl.
No cooling banks of white clouds.
Lost tropical rainforest canopy, exposed soil singes.
Dry riverbeds. With no forests, no inland rivers
beyond continents’ mountainous fringes.
Translated by:
Bertony Louis
Poet
Bertony Louis is a Haitian poet whose work bridges cultures, languages, and continents. Winner of nineteen international poetry awards and author of Recovering the Horizons (Recoudre les Horizons) (L’Appeau Strophe, 2022), he has received prestigious fellowships and residencies, including the Scholars at Risk Program at Harvard University and the Artist Protection Fund. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Harvard Review, Pinhole Poetry, North of Oxford Review, Entrevous, Eunoia Review, and Oupoli. Exploring themes of nature, brotherhood, displacement, sadness, and exile, his work has been presented in readings and workshops across Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. He is currently a Research scholar Fellow in residence at Carnegie Mellon University and Writer in Residence at City of Asylum in the United States.
He has translated RoundView poems into French, and has worked with the team on developing our understanding of poetry as pedagogy and how multi-lingual poetry helps us to learn.