HAITI"S DEATH TOLL REACHES 230,000

From the AP:

Haiti's government has raised the death toll for the Jan. 12 earthquake to 230,000 from 212,000 and says more bodies remain uncounted.

The government initially estimated 150,000 dead on Jan. 24, apparently from bodies being recovered in the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince, the capital that was near the epicenter.

Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said Tuesday the government now counts 230,000 deaths.

But she says the new figure is not definitive. She says it does not include bodies buried by private funeral homes in private cemeteries or the dead buried by their own families.

From Mark Harris:

RAMA

Jer. 31:15 Ainsi dit l'Éternel: Une voix a été ouïe à Rama, une lamentation, des pleurs amers, Rachel pleurant ses fils, refusant d'être consolée au sujet de ses fils, parce qu'ils ne sont pas.

It appears that somewhere deep below Carrefour,
near Port au Prince
the North American and Caribbean plates
moved after two centuries of tense engagement.

Six miles up, at four fifty-three in the afternoon,
January 12th, Rachel began anew to weep for her children.

The sun was blotted from the sky
and the dust rose
and the night came
with agony in the buildings
and anguish in the streets.
It was day and night, the first day.

Rachel's people,
They are no more,
All have gone down,
Down with the presidential palace,
Down with the churchly palace,
Down with the all the places of block and mortar,
Down to death.

Read the rest of the poem at Preludium.