Edwidge danticat - The Blue Hill lyrics

The stench of sulfur mixes with the reeking blue toxic trash that was dumped on the hill that January day. It had been named "the blue hill" ever since. Everyone is afraid to say who is responsible for this open gash in the earth that poisons everything and will, eventually, eat up the legs of children and rot the roots of plants, cause the dogs, the flies, and the fish to disappear. Even the mosquitos won't survive. Rumor has it that the garbage comes from a friendly country that has an overlord of chemical refuse and needs to find generous neighbors who can house it for them. So far from God indeed. Proximity is sometimes a curse. That's how a dump like this came into our backyard. Except that at City Hall, under the pretext of us being the twin city of God-knows-where, they pocketed the cash that exchanged for this so-called favor. On top of that, the military, the ministers, and the honorable members of the government have all made tons of money. One Fine Monday, at exactly noon, the ship, sailing under the friendly neighbors flag, reached the top of the harbor. The kids swam close to it, performed amazing pirouettes and somersaults, acrobatics meant to impress the cruise ship tourists in the hope that the visitors would enthusiastically throw their pennies into the water. In no time at all, instead of being filled with generous tourists, the wharf was under military watch. The ship was full of guards with the faces of unleashed and trained dogs eager to stuff themselves with n******g meat. You could see battle dress, golden flashers, and a thousand boots of the Special Forces. On their heads were green berets and on their clean-shaven faces were planted a kind of cynical seriousness, a conquering look of What do I care about the petty local squabbles? They spoke sternly into their walkie-talkies, surely of state. The seaside was promptly evacuated, with a huge deployment of troop vehicles whose sirens and tinted windows scared the locals. Trucks transported hundreds of suitcases up the hill. Shops and businesses were forced to close their doors. The chemical trash-dumping troops went around every street, every neighborhood, showing off their machine guns at every window. They imposed to a curfew without warning. It was a matter of military strategy, letting people know that they had taken over the city. So every mouth stayed quiet. Local men were rounded up and forced to work day and night for whole week to burrow everything into the blue hill.