Silence in spring, absence of birdsong.
No homes for wildlife, nature retreats.
Pavements bake, no respite from the heat,
no shade from trees on hot streets.
Flash floods as rain runs off landscape paved over,
water rises, drains and sewers overflow.
Soil washes into rivers, waters silt brown. Wetlands
drained, nothing to hinder rain’s rapid overland flow.
With no deep roots, the soil depletes.
How many harvests are left for crops’ green tendrils to unfurl?
Damaged hillsides, bare soil. Rain brings erosion,
scars run deep. Dust storms swirl.
No cooling banks of white clouds.
Lost tropical rainforest canopy, exposed soil singes.
Dry riverbeds. With no forests, no inland rivers
beyond continents’ mountainous fringes.
Translated by:
Bertony Louis
Poet
Bertony Louis is a Haitian poet whose work bridges cultures, languages, and continents. He is the author of Recovering the Horizons (L’Appeau Strophe, 2022) and the widely anthologized poems “Cradle of My Vitality” and “Smile Gone Up in Smoke” (Harvard Review, 2025). Winner of thirteen international poetry awards — including the Castello di Duino Poesia Special Jury Prize and the École de la Loire First Prize — his poetry has been recognized across Europe, North America, and the Caribbean.
He has translated RoundView poems into French, and has worked with the team on developing our understanding of poetry as pedagogy and how multi-lingual poetry helps us to learn.