the daily life in the Haitian countryside, cannot in fact be translated. Additionally, the use of
French in this particular type of circumstance is too intimately associated with the former
colonizer to be the language of the poet’s expression. The constancy of the poet’s feelings,
however, in both poems confirms that such ideals, regardless of the obstacles or outcome, must
still be expressed. Each poem also ends in a sort of warning, indicating that the effects of these
circumstances will not be felt by the poet alone. In “Epître,” on est dans l’indulgence,” just as in
“Choucoune,” it is the unborn baby, the next generation, which is also “in chains.”
At the conclusion of Choucoune, the poet still sings of his love and loss. As with theother poems which have been examined, the “understated” subject exists on two levels. On the
one hand, the poem’s ending testifies to Haitian poetry’s dependent status on French influence
and to Haiti’s on-going struggle for complete independence. On the other hand, the poet takes
advantage of this inevitable reality not only to affirm his choice to write in French (or in Creole)
but also to allow this Creole poem to do what the French-speaking foreigner does in
“Choucoune”: invade the French collection. Does this poem represent a moment in which
Durand wills his text opaque to a French-reading audience? Finally, the product of this union
between the white foreigner and Choucoune is specifically named. He is an enchained petit
Pierre, the familiar character from Les deux bouts de l’echelle, as well from other poems in the
collection. In this way, Durand links the committed poet with the helpless child. Similarly, the
various poems of the collection bring together the humble poet with the poet of revolution, the
poor black poet with the powerful “barde noir.”