oiseaux” to this time period, and an end-note reads “Cachots du Port-au-Prince, 11 juillet 1889,”
a precision which is rare in Durand’s poetry. “Chantez oiseaux” begins with a refrain in which
the poet calls to his birds, mes oiseaux, as well as the nation’s birds, “oiseaux de palmists.”
Their songs can be heard by the prisoners; their songs are joyful because of the liberty they
enjoy. The first half of the poem elaborates on the opposition between these “free birds” in
nature and the “caged birds” behind the bars. Although the confined prisoners long to breathe
the same air as these birds, death becomes the only means through which the birds will soar to
freedom. In the third stanza, however, those in prison do discover their own song of sorts:
“...forts de notre conscience, chantons encore dans nos dures prisons...” (14, 16). In the last
stanza of Durand’s poem, it is not physical death that is the real threat but the death of the soul
and the death of the song. The prison in Port-au-Prince becomes a metaphor for Haiti in general,
where songs are dying and the soul is dead:
O mon pays! ô my belle patrie!
Pourquoi faut-il que des hommes méchants
Trouvent leur joie à voir l’âme meurtrie
Et leur délice à voir mourir nos chants? (20-23)These verses are simultaneously the most explicit and the vaguest of the entire poem:they are an outcry for Haiti in peril, but the men who endanger the country, these “hommes
méchants/mé-chants, “(these mean men/ men with a bad song) are not specified. A hostile and
unpredictable political climate certainly prevented Durand from direct accusations. Not naming,
however, neither the “nous” for which the poet speaks nor these enemies of the country allows
for multiple interpretations. A number of factors may threaten societal freedoms, national
sovereignty, and poetic expression. The last stanza ends with impeding death, as the martyr
prisoners brace their arms “en croix.” The poem ends on a victorious note, however, when the
songs continue. A refrain nearly similar to the refrain found earlier in the poem reads as follows: