Читать книгу Providential - Colin Channer - Страница 9

NEVILLE’S LOGIC

He’d been there with the rest

on garbage duty, cleaning up,

chucking bodies into graves,

sweat for eye water,

free born, speaking English,

no clan or tribal language,

no lash markings on the shoulders,

no embossing on the back,

just a skin, a color, a future

with set duties, some roles:

pickininny to whites,

livestock with language,

to blacks—recruit to toughen

up for backra work.

Jamaica? Their country—

Jamaican? Near white

mustee mulatto quadroon

Nation?

Something more than land

where you is born,

which busha, which estate,

which district near which town?

Until he sees

courthouse square, St. Thomas,

negro, statue with a breath,

helmet, tunic, face fed

well, no whiskers,

belonging

Jamaica Something Force.

Place, rank and country.

Own it. Pass it on.