What crimes, Haiti?

Was it being downwind of the Canary Islands
in 1492? Was that the crime?
un-avoidable landfall for Colon’s fateful, lustful sailors
lost somewhere east of the Indies?

Was it for having spectacular bays and waterfalls?
the best mahogany
and peaceful agriculturalists flush with corn and cassava
free for the plundering? What crime?

Was it for the ease with which
trusting Native Tainos could be enslaved
toiling unto death under the whip and rod?
Was this the crime?


Or the fertility of the fields sown in cane sugar
enriched by blood and sweat
a commodity boom spanning Africa, Haiti and
Europe, the fountain of endless riches and rum
What a crime!

Or perhaps it was the willingness to pay
Mass reparations to France for 150 years
And to tolerate for too long occupation
By the Gringo Military boot
The Gringo customs officer, the Gringo viceroy
For believing Bill Clinton?

Or the persistence and survival of peasant farming
On small-holdings widely distributed
Among the offspring of the liberators?
A people rooted to their soil.
Or was the real crime in the eyes of the greedy
The brazen uprising
The desperate war from 1791 to 1803
An enslaved people throwing off the yoke
The First Liberation in the Americas
And the Abolition of Chattel Slavery?

The “bad example” in 1804 of a proud Republic
Calling for the end of outrageous dehumanization
Calling for the oppressed to Rise Up from the Pit
Of historical and cultural catastrophe and defeat.
Now that’s some crime!

The New World Order requires complicity in crimes
To wit: the act of submission to the religion of “free trade”
The rendered powerlessness at the hands of foreign capitalists
The betrayal of the people of the soil
Left to scratch at worthless dirt, abandoned to its luck
As the shanty that is Port-au-Prince grew neglect like a cancer?

Were these crimes the reason why?
Were these the sins leading to
January 12, the scales of justice balancing
The ground swallowing up those not worthy to live?

Or were the crimes the calamities
of injustice
of a racism so profound
that an entire people was yoked
beneath invaders, dictators, traitors
Then was January 12 just an average quake
Rendered calamitous by the crimes of our forefathers?

Has the time for rebalancing come?
Where light will shine unmistakably on the real crime
relentlessly peeling away the blindfolds of denial?
Clearing away the stink of hypocrisy?