From Trouillot's Par la fissure de mes mots, 2014.

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Un jour

Un jour je renierai ma mère, les yeux fermés j’irai
sans vagues ni bateaux dans mes prunelles affronter
la sécheresse et les immeubles en verre d’où l’on
apprend à aimer la beauté froide des palissades

Un jour, je renierai la mémoire de mes sens, j’irai
avec sous mes pieds l’odeur des algues broyées, avec
sous mes bras des éclats d’embruns en bandoulière

Un jour, je renierai la douleur de ma naissance, j’irai
sans estampes ni mains offertes pour retenir le sel
de mes larmes

J’irai sans bâton ni colère dans mes entrailles

Un jour, bientôt peut-être, j’apprendrai à courir
sans rêver de soleils verts, de rires en cascade
et de nasses folles

Mais aujourd’hui mon île a plié son aile et j’y blottis
ma peine d’oiseau écartelé entre l’incertitude
et l’envol dans la beauté émeraude de son histoire
frémissante

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One day

One day I will renounce my mother, with eyes closed I will go
without waves or boats in my sight to brave
the dryness and the glass buildings from which one
learns to enjoy the cold beauty of fences

One day, I will renounce the memory of my senses, I will go
with the smell of crushed algae under my feet, with
bursts of ocean-spray flung under my arm

One day, I will renounce the pain of my birth, I will go
without impressions or hands ready to hold back the salt
of my tears

I will go without a cane or rage in my entrails

One day, soon perhaps, I will learn how to run
without dreaming of green suns, peals of laughter
and tangled nets

But today my island has folded its wing and I nestle there
my pain of a bird torn apart between uncertainty
and the soaring flight into the emerald beauty of its trembling
history

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Mémoire

Le frémissement de nos souffles
se désagrège
comme des pétales
prisonniers de la main qui flétrit

je voudrais conserver le temps
dans une mémoire
sans tangage ni tremblements

et retrouver la virginité de l’espoir
où les mères ne meurent pas
obscurcies
de rêves détruits
d’enfants cassés
de chagrins enfouis
de mille histoires que nul ne dira

si ce n’est cette mémoire alourdie de larmes

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Memory
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The quivering of our breath
disintegrates
like petals
prisoners of the withering hand

I would like to conserve time
in a memory
without tossing or trembling

and find the virginity of hope
where mothers don’t die
shrouded

by destroyed dreams
by broken children
by buried sorrows
by a thousand tales that no one will tell

save for this memory weighed down by tears

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Petit matin

à Nady

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Parfois j’épie le ciel et je ne vois que toi
l’espace, les heures, les cours d’eau
les collines et la poussière
méconnaissables et pourtant à ton visage
si semblables

Parfois je guette la multitude
et ne reconnais que nous deux
dans les rides des marchands d’oubli
les cris grégaires des chiens perdus
le sourire hybride d’un passant
ou l’éternel va-et-vient
des plumes vacillantes

Lorsque les faisceaux tapageurs
effacent nos marelles
et brouillent mes envies
à cœur ouvert
j’attrape ton regard
ribambelle sur mes blessures
d’enfant
je me chiffonne contre ta peau
lumière secrète
du petit matin
couler sur mon chagrin

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Early Morning

to Nady

Sometimes I observe the sky and i see only you
the space, the hours, the waterway
sthe hills and the dust
unrecognizable and nevertheless so similar
to your face

Sometimes I examine the crowd
and I recognize only the two of us
in the wrinkles of the traders of oblivion
the huddled cries of lost dogs
the hybrid smile of a passer-by
or the eternal to and fro
of beating feathers

While the dazzling rays
erase our hopscotch games
and scramble my desires
with an open heart
I catch your gaze
plentitude over my childhood
wounds
I crumple myself against your skin
secret light
of early morning
flowing over my sorrow

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A rigorous, attentive, and extraordinarily dexterous writer, and one of the most exciting, perspicacious, and vibrant contemporary voices in Caribbean and African Diaspora literature is: Évelyne Trouillot, Haitian poet, novelist, essayist, dramaturge, translator, and critic. Born in Port-au-Prince in 1954 to a family with an important and long-standing literary presence, Trouillot carried out her primary studies first in Port-au-Prince and then in Florida, where she earned a BA from Florida International University in 1985 before returning to Haiti. A professor for many years until her recent retirement from the Université d’État d’Haïti, in the Faculté des sciences humaines, Trouillot has been an invited scholar, researcher, and writer-in-residence at numerous international universities throughout her career.

With intellectual commitments that include history, anthropology, and political and cultural criticism, Trouillot is also prolific in an impressive number of genres. Multilingual, and with profound investments in Haitian, French, and English-language literatures, she has published widely in French and in Creole (Kreyòl). A collection of short stories titled La chambre interdite, which appeared in 1996, was Trouillot’s first published work, with her subsequent short story collections Parlez-moi d'amour, and Je m'appelle Fridhomme, being published in 2002 and 2007, respectively. In addition to her juvenile literature, namely L'ile De Ti Jean (2003), and La fille à la guitare / Yon fi, yon gita, yon vwa (2012), which emerged as a bilingual French-Creole edition, Trouillot has published poetry collections in Creole and French. She has treated readers to Plidetwal, which appeared in 2005, and Il faut parfois chanter (2023). Par la fissure de mes mots, the collection from which the poems translated here were selected, was published in 2014.

Trouillot is deeply appreciated for her novelistic work also, having published Rosalie l’infâme (2003), an award-winning novel for which she has received enthusiastic international acclaim, as well as Le Mirador aux étoiles (2007), La mémoire aux abois (2010), Absences sans frontières (2013), and Le Rond Point (2015). More recently, she has published Désirée Congo (2020), and Les Jumelles de la rue Nicolas (2022). In addition to being translated into various languages, Trouillot’s esteemed literary contributions have received numerous awards as well. Among others, these include accolades such as the Prix Soroptimist de la Romancière Francophone for Rosalie l’infâme; the Prix Beaumarchais from the Écritures Théâtrale Contemporaines en Caraïbe, for her play Le Bleu de l’île (2005); the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde for La mémoire aux abois; and the Prix Barbancourt for her novel Le Rond Point.
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