easy if not an empty one to make When the Haitian poet says he would leave his country for a
foreign, white woman, chances are that he does not mean it. “A l’étrangère” works once again,
like “Tristia” and “Ne pleure pas” and even “Nos payses” to elevate the supremacy of national
commitment.
A more realistic picture is to be found in the poem “Fils du noir.” The subject is the sonof a black father and a white mother. He remembers his parents as happy and in love, their
colors forming a “doux contraste.” Now that he himself is in love with a white girl, he hopes for
a similar union. The poem predictably ends with her rejection: “Le fils du noir fit peur à la fille
des blancs!” Although the poet is able to love across color and racial lines, and the pure notion of
love outside all constraints must still be expressed, the taboos in a country still very much
divided by color prevent the mediating quality of love to take hold. It is not that the white
women are stereotypically unattainable for inherent qualities they might possess, but that the
social conditions of a post-colonial society occasionally inhibit the free expression of love across
the boundaries of race, color, or class.
The Haitian male poet, like many of these women, is a recurrent character in Rires etPleurs. He frequently goes by Paul or more often, Pierre. With all of these names, the reader
begins to associate an array of details with each character and carries this information over from
one poem to the other. An additional poem, which serves as a transition to the ones dealing more
concretely with the legacy of colonialism and slavery in matters of love, is “A qui croire?” which
features Manoune and Pierre. Manoune, the black woman, has been seduced by the handsome
and eloquent Pierre. He is described as having black hair, but his brown face is lighter than her
own skin, suggesting that he is a mulatto. Pierre has been away for quite some time, and when
he returns, this difference in skin color appears more pronounced and signals that something has