Daily Express Article - 28 September 2008

What Can be Done to Avert Baby Dumping
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"The Fallen Native" - 24 November 2008 (a poem by Nilakrisna James)

Tempted by the shores of sunny weather


I left the white man's land


To return to the legacy of ancestors.




My heart torn by the reality of cultures


So alien to what I have known;


Yet thrown


Into a deeper wilderness


Than the vast blue sea that watched my departure.




An ocean of faces that mirror my own;


Indifferent to the monotony of shades of brown.




The bitterness of cappuccino conversations


In worn out shacks,


In designer slacks;


Oh, they are angry!


Forty Five years of hunger


And they wonder




Where did all the years go


As their white hairs grow?


Nothing much has changed except the grey concrete


Sweeping across green and their former bare feet.




Yearning for white man's land


And the days of pure, polished sand;


When we understood only the simplicity


Of respect


And the economics of equality


Without having to read between the lines


And let go of our wines;


When we were monarchs of our own destiny


And conquerors of our own fate.




For the land was ours


And we never watched the darkening hours;


For time stood still


And never could it have been envisaged


That we would allow ourselves to be savaged;


Intellectually ravaged.




They knew nothing in a room of five.


Silent as if not alive.


The chattering powers grew louder


And the weaker left to shudder;


Put pen to paper!


Droplets of red spilling later.




Sealed and delivered


In a honeycombed hive


With killer bees


While we dropped on our knees.




"The Fallen Native", a poem by Nilakrisna James


Written 24th September 2008


Copyright © Nilakrisna James 2008, all rights reserved