the young spend their time looking forward
the old looking back; whilst my vision’s
still sharp, let me think on

That country boy in a family of girls
his Mammee crouched over the kerosene stove
his Da on the front porch, reflecting

on returnees bringing their voices back
from over the seas, in a flash of black leather
and a grip* of new clothes.

The porch looked out on that same road,
once a track where cartwheels turned
bearing broken limbs of sugar-cane.

Then tarmac came, and speed,
motorbikes and diesel, country buses
full with folks greedy for civilization.

Buses with names on the side,
Conqueror, or Justify, loud music
and jewellery blazing, just like the one

that cut him down that school morning.

And I’m thinking of all the things he’s missed:
the first MacDonalds, the pull of a fag,

the feel of girls, hip-hop.
Then there’s others: guns and knives,
Race; that last the hardest, seeing as

Mammee’s fadda fadda had shipped in from Madras
and Da’s dadda dadda had left Accra in chains
and somewhere too, along the line

blue eyes had rolled down Plantation Hill
from some English second son.

That golden skin, that tamarind skin
that mud-brown, calabash, red-earth skin
would have been sliced to ribbons just defending;

and I wouldn’t remember him now
a generation and an ocean later,
a flash of white teeth and blue eyes shining

as he fetched me a bucket to bathe that time
I brought my grip to their Corentyne front door.

* suitcase