Port-au-Prince

Deep plunge then long glide
chest almost scraping the bottom.
Emerge without sound.
A lazy backstroke
belly in the air
watching a corpulent
blue-black hotel maid
soft-step in and out
of the Creole mural
encircling the pool.

The saddest of the still
almost human places
on this sad earth
beyond the barbed wire
on top of the wall:
Port-au-Prince.
And in this December 1982
Bébé Doc is ordering torture.

Mon cher Tonton Macoute Numéro Un,
did you give him the works?
Did he spit them out?
Did he cry out in pain? No?
Tonton Macoute No. 2 give No. 1 the works.
(Beckett and Pinter ponder, incognito.)

Afternoon on the empty verandah
of the hotel bar. A stuck-forever tropical fan.
The pool attendant's thin black face
reflected in the mirror above the bottles,
a pair of eyes as still and watchful
as the unfocused ones of girls and parrots
in the mural by the mirror. Turn and look
beyond the wall at Port-au-Prince.

Not far the gleaming white palace of the Duvaliers.
Not far the ochre army barracks. Nearby
the dark shades of the Tonton Macoutes.

Some twenty kilometers up the coast,
the hard young white naked breasts
of Parisiennes sunning themselves
by the Club Med pool. Turned-on nipples
centimeters away from the lips and eyes
of black paupers scrubbing the tiles,
in rags, on their knees.

Not far, Mr. Brown, the proprietor,
and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the vegetarians,
read and are in Graham Greene's
The Comedians at hotel “Trianon”.

Nearby, a human beast of burden pulls
an overloaded cart, another pushes.
The weight exceeds theirs by ten to one.
The wheel was invented, but when
it breaks, as it must, dread and resigned
sorrow will deepen their furrows.

Hotel “Trianon” is full of Manhattan men
in their fifties. Years later, one sees these faces,
those still alive, on balconies above Fifth Avenue
where the annual gay parade makes a right tum
at Washington Square. Later one understands
why Haitian boys ring the “Trianon” – so docile
and persistently friendly. Later one realizes
that for two dollars they received and gave AIDS.

Later one observes in Bangkok and Manila
hotelfuls of Japanese Shibumitsu managers,
penises erect at company expense, standing
in room doorways in their faux-silk pyjamas,
waiting for the whores to be brought by bus.
Ah, the Japanese waiting cocksure for an offing.

Thank God that in the “Trianon” in 1982,
in Bangkok and Manila, I was one of the
unwelcome guests. Still alive and healthy.