LETTER FROM HOME

Letter From Home

‘The chickens stampeded on this aerogramme:
We will slaughter them soon,
They won`t do it again.’












The chickens were good news, despite their claw marks.
Small symbols ease my mind, too many miles from home.
Thoughts slip the net of British life and move
To avocados, small and tight on trees in January,
To young goats straggling the tracks, providing
Entertainment for the herd boys, meat for the pot.

Edmore’s back in school, another thing to celebrate;
Baba worked for months, moulding bricks for money,
Taking the term’s fees to the village teacher,
Walking proud but painfully.

The girls are ‘helping out at home’.
A nice way to say there’s no money for their fees.
They are clever girls and watch Edmore leave each day,
Honour his return and fight for attention, for stories,
Tastes of the learning Baba’s bricks bought for their brother.

Educated girls marry well, a bride price
Feeds the family for a year. These girls are wise,
Know that knowing nothing has a price to pay,
Repeat patterns from generation to generation.
They carry water and watch the red dust rise,
Laugh at the herd boys, pray daily for miracles.

I fold the aerogramme and pack my books,
Ready for another day of learning. My skin,
Once tight, is now soft around my bones.
I feel hunger on the tongue and in the mind,
Not in the belly’s ache and eye’s haze
Of twelve-hour days on maize porridge.

I take the tube, too late to walk,
And greet my white friends in the library.
London roars below me and in the warm room,
It’s easy to lose oneself in scientific theory,
It beats herding goats and making bricks.
On the tube later in the day, a poster:
‘There’s no honour in poverty.’

Copyright:Madresicilia2008