Port-au-Prince, or the Country Crawling on its Backside
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince
· 2 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
News from Port-au-Prince reaches me like the echoes of a shattered dream. I spent the evening listening to Syto speak of Champ de Mars. My soul detached itself, it left my body, and here it wanders, barefoot, in the entrails of Port-au-Prince.
Daniel returned from Cap yesterday. His brow heavy, his eyes full of a fire without light. He whispered to me the laments of a city on the run, the sighs of a country curled up on its bones.
I should go find chicken feathers and a little black earth. To make myself an egregore. A talisman of dust. To remind myself that I still have a homeland even if this land no longer has form, nor body, nor law.
He says that Port-au-Prince has taken refuge where the air is not yet a threat: between Delmas 75 and Puits-Blain, like a wounded beast retreated into its last burrow.
The bandits, for their part, have conquered the rooftops of Christ-Roi, planting their flags on the heights of fear.
Even the sky wavers.
He says that the cemetery walls have fallen. That the dead, weary of waiting, have risen. From Rue Oswald Durand to Fleury Bathier, they have deserted their graves to come judge the living.
But who, here, can still meet the gaze of a ghost? Montseigneur Guilloux is bare. Rue Alerte has become a silent widow. No truck crosses it anymore. It remains there, frozen, watching for a return that will not happen. I want to see Rue Laraque again. Ruelle Vilgrain comes back to me, a burst of childhood. And you, Rue Montalais, princess of yesteryear, how are you, my tender forgotten one? But Port-au-Prince no longer responds. It crawls on its backside, dragged by the dead, in an endless procession, without grace, without dignity. Every day, the invisibles invite me to their dark mass. Guedénibo awaits me. It is on Rue des Arts Plastiques that I must go to cleanse my soul. Too many dead in my city. Too many silences that scream.
And the living?
The dead who breathe by accident. Venlégédé! Bwa Loray!
Offer us one last flash.
Not to see. No.
But to burn what remains
and start anew. Yves Carmel Lafortune
July 1, 2025
Fll.
He says that the cemetery walls have fallen. That the dead, weary of waiting, have risen. From Rue Oswald Durand to Fleury Bathier, they have deserted their graves to come judge the living.
But who, here, can still meet the gaze of a ghost? Montseigneur Guilloux is bare. Rue Alerte has become a silent widow. No truck crosses it anymore. It remains there, frozen, watching for a return that will not happen. I want to see Rue Laraque again. Ruelle Vilgrain comes back to me, a burst of childhood. And you, Rue Montalais, princess of yesteryear, how are you, my tender forgotten one? But Port-au-Prince no longer responds. It crawls on its backside, dragged by the dead, in an endless procession, without grace, without dignity. Every day, the invisibles invite me to their dark mass. Guedénibo awaits me. It is on Rue des Arts Plastiques that I must go to cleanse my soul. Too many dead in my city. Too many silences that scream.
And the living?
The dead who breathe by accident. Venlégédé! Bwa Loray!
Offer us one last flash.
Not to see. No.
But to burn what remains
and start anew. Yves Carmel Lafortune
July 1, 2025
Fll.
