Its words are in Haitian Creole and became the lyrics to the song Choucoune, later rewritten in English as Yellow Bird, based on the words "ti zwazo" (French: petits oiseaux; little birds) from the Durand poem.
Durand's inspiration for the poem was a marabou woman named Marie Noel Belizaire—nicknamed Choucoune—who ran a restaurant in Cap-Haïtien.
Marie Noel Belizaire is said to have died in 1924, her seventy-first year, having spent the last portion of her life in her native village of La-Plaine-du-Nord as a beggar—but still widely recognized as the subject of Durand's poem.
While in jail, he wrote the poem addressed to a bird that had perched on the window of his cell.
A decade after the poem was written, Michel Mauleart Monton, also Haitian, set it to music.