Listen to My Clamor: Jacques Roumain’s “Call to Arms”

Abstract

Listen to My Clamor:Jacques Roumain’s “Call to Arms” Jacques Roumain and Translation and commentary by Patti M. Marxsen CALL TO ARMS I FREEDOMis a checkthat cannot be cashed on Wall Street.Justice,rights, soft promises to tossin the basket of etcetera. II Brothers, are you dead among the dead in an immense mass graveand are you letting the flame that illuminated our warring fathersburn out, those still not at rest, not sleeping in little warm tombs,but still bloody in the battlefieldswhere they fell facing the red sun? Of those men who came how sweetly flowed the words from their lips:Isn’t it so that all men are brothers?Then we held out a handBut pulling their white hands backThey spit in our faces: dirty niggers.Brothers, brothers, are you dead among the dead? [End Page 228] Batraville,and you, martyr, o Péralte crucifiedwill your blood not call for Vengeanceand will it never unleash a full cry of hatredto awaken the trumpeting conches? III This andthat:bent backs, walls crumblingand hands hesitant in the bottomof empty pockets,this and thatmade my painburst forthand my pain grewamplified to the limitand becamea great clamoring rage. I will leave.I will go to you.I will cross the riverand not in the shallowsfor so greatam Iby the strength of my furythat my feet touch the riverbed everywhere.And so I will howland you will runfor I will have howled at deathand drawn death outby his long arms. [End Page 229] You will runwith the tormented eyesof wild animals pursuedby fire in the bush.And I will laughI will laughwith white teethand even while laughingI will shout at you:Ha! Cowards, ha! DogsHa!Men with lowered eyes.Must the fireburnMust the mouthspitbefore you might rush forth as a crowd?And your eyesare they sunkenand your heartswitheredand your fistsmutilatedso that you no longer feelthe death that came from beyond the seasinside of youaround youamong youas it burns your heritageand spitsits white contempton your black foreheads? [End Page 230] Listen, o youlisten to my clamor.I wantthe flame of passionto penetrate you.I wantpregnant womento tremble from itdeep in the fruitof their bellies.I wantred bloodin the veins of old mento light the flameand on hearing of thisthe woman shoves her manoutsideaway from the houseby his shoulderswith harsh words,and I want children weepingon their fragile arms again.Haiti, to Arms! Jacques Roumain1928 [End Page 231] Translator’s Note Jacques Roumain (1907–1944) was twenty-one or twenty-two years old when he wrote “Appel,” which I have translated as “Call to Arms” in keeping with the title’s military connotations that imply a “draft into service” or a “roll call” for readiness. But given the urgency of the poem, we might just as easily interpret it as a call to revolution. For as the poet confesses in his plain-spoken language, “my pain grew … and became a great clamoring rage.” Indeed, the ferocity of this work, in which a young man scolds and pleads with his countrymen who seem to have lost the will to rise up and claim their heritage—albeit thirteen years into the US occupation and dispirited by Louis Borno’s dictatorial presidency (1922–1930)—is nothing less than revolutionary. Where did this audacious voice come from? After two years at the Institut Grünau in Switzerland, a rural boarding school for elite boys, and aborted studies in Zurich (engineering) and Spain (agronomy), Jacques Roumain must have felt rather uncertain upon his return to Haiti in 1927.1 Like many young, European-educated men of his class, his coming-of-age in Haiti would require an initiation into the impact of the US marines’ occupation of Haiti, which threatened to shape his future...