Marie Lily Cerat

Poetry / Gender Based Violence (GBV)

These five (5) pieces by Marie Lily Cerat were created at various times. They address issues of “racial justice”, “human rights”, and “gender-based violence and discrimination”. In sum, the pieces holler about how heavy it is to be black and immigrant in America. The Haitian Creole piece is most recent and done in memoriam of the departed in the Haitian community in New York in the time of the Corona virus.

Collection of 5 Original Pieces

"If I Could One Day Meet the Sun:

If I could one day meet the sun I’d lay at its feet all the world’s bad blood and heartache And we’d no longer need to run

Nor would we need to hide from the gun There’d be no pain, sorrow and ache if I could one day meet the sun

We’d hear the gay tam-tam of the dun dun We’d all in the victory-dance partake, And we’d no longer need to run

We’d sing songs of freedom that are homespun

And filled with passions. For our own sake!

If I could one day meet the sun

I’d lay love and liberty in the shade of that palmetto’s frond Set a red hibiscus wreath on the shore to subdue the earth’s quake And we’d no longer need to run

Moonlight would crown our daughters and sons

Nothing and no one would ever be at stake

If I could one day meet the sun

And we’d no longer need to run.

"Please Show Me the Way"

The tick of her quick steps, and

The tock of her soft cough

Are sufficient

To help me look for the new day

Just like before in the life she didn’t know

Yet, I still need my body to be

Illuminated by the sun’s spectacled eye

To regain enough strength to pretend

And execute the minute fragments of living

That still remain inside

Me, the displaced, uprooted and battered To float and rise

I go on this illusory land Of the free With no windows to look out from With light and perfumed soap That soaked life and smell of being And I think and cry Stepping outside Seeing me clipped wings Enclosed forever In this life

In these rooms, behind those doors Straddling and swallowing The bitter-sugary pill In the windowless life. No exit. Victim of the blinding lights in that cell

I escape in a daydream where I run Barefoot into the arms of my lost love.

But the sea of sameness with no sun Keeps the cuffs and chains, can you see?

"Reflect From the Texan Sun"

There, his feet and face Laid away, apart from his body, himself And they were draped in a starless sky.

Curtis! It was Curtis.

There, he sat. Bent like an old man Commissioned to exist in pictures, still, lifeless.

Then he was marching headless, parading the truth with no mouth. Truths after truths, no half-truths, you know.

He was neighbor to heroes, evangelists, rabbis, fishers of wo/men, Prostitutes and nuns. Ukraine!

He screeched like a sacred and scared black bird in the night Emptor. Empty, emptiness. No one answered on the other side. Ominously the echo vibrated Blurring the borders.

Accounts of life past And life to come A life totally bathed in pools of corruption.

"Crystal Clear"

Seeing: My land Brown, un-asphalted And breathing. Clear, pure. Crisp air Of crystal that rings and crackles under the rain of exploding silver bullets that shake and shackle.

Seeing: My home Emptied, ruined Punctured Swallowing children, women and men

From sea to sea, you see!

Feeding on them in the quiet darkness.

Seeing: My childhood

Running from the familiar to the unknown

That will become known.

Bliss turned to sadness.

The pain of an empty stomach pangs like childbirth

Broken child

Childhood broken

Crystal clear

Drifting forever at the bottom of the sea, you see?

Seeing: You Land, home, childhood Broken crystal pieces As the wind sweeps it all away.

"Lapriye Gede" was originally written in Haitian Creole. The English translation is simply to provide access to readers

Marie Lily Cerat is a co-founder of the Brooklyn-based organization Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, (HWHR) created in 1992 to respond to the needs of Haitians fleeing persecution. Cerat continues to serve on the HWHR Advisory Board and facilitate an ongoing support group for survivors of domestic/intimate partner violence like herself.

links