http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYkDGsj4cRQ&feature=uploademail
The Nation Builders
Brown men crowd an island hilltop,
voice French-Creole and Spanish,
not the English patois of generations
assembled there before them.
Belittled by nicknames,
lynched by contemptuous stares,
condemned as job snatchers,
pounced on by immigration,
they are herded into vans, shackled like cattle.
Shrouded in life’s hardness,
they shrug off morning’s crispness,
ignore the later sun’s searing sting.
Hungry eyes, straining downhill,
scout for trucks crawling up.
Like mongoose out to kill,
they charge the first that slows down.
The man, his engine still running,
shouts, “Two days wuk for four.”
Men scramble, shove,
become acrobats, settle into place
speed to hard work and low pay.
The disappointed
remain on the look-out,
wait their turn.
They are builder of island nations.
They are fathers of leaders who see
with the eyes of the disenfranchised.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 05.09. 2009
Published in Jigsaw, Writers Works, Bern, Switzerland, 2010
Poem read at the 20th Poetry Festival of Medellin, Colombia, July 2010
ReplyDeleteBeautiful poem. Beautifully read.
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