Why Nobody is Joane Florvil

by Jean Jacques Pierre-Paul (Haiti)
translated by Margaret Randall

Nobody wants to be the victim of their own destiny
Nobody wants
to get up each day
with the world’s scars on their forehead
They killed you, Joane Florvil,
every day
everywhere

When they murdered you in Africa
they said it was tradition
When they murdered you in the United States
it was self–defense
They murdered you in Chile
because you were a bad mother

The truth is everyone profits from your death
They pay some to accuse you
others to arrest you
others to place your death notice in the media

A small group of the outraged
try to keep you in collective memory
but it’s useless to cry pronouncing your name
or asking your forgiveness
How can we live with such immorality?
How can we live in a city without poetry
or mirrors, without embraces, without Joane Florvil?

I am one of the cowards
who didn’t understand you, defend you
All that is left for me now is to cry
as I write this poem
to tell you I am ashamed
to belong to the species that killed you
In a city filled with pretentious cowards

we might have loved you
might have created
a beautiful bird’s nest from your gaze

(Life is the beauty of existence)

You didn’t have enough spring times
to count all the stones we hurled at you
You didn’t live to understand the Chilean dream
We all murdered you Joane Florvil
because your eyes were the wrong color
your accent isn’t English, French or from Berlin
Now we don’t know what to tell your daughter

We murdered you because it is dangerous to be Joane Florvil
at election time
but you could teach us something
Your brief journey left a lesson
we will soon forget:
The only thing worth loving is one human being
different from all others

Living isn’t urgent
Loving is