POETRY: NOT FROM HERE

You were not born here

                       my child

                       not here.

You saw daylight

Among our islands

The sun was always there

None could tap the light

From your eyes

Or dictate roofs into space

                           for your colour.

There in the middle of a hemisphere

You and I were born

               down there.

We were not in the exodus

There was no Moses

And this was no promised land

You may not know this yet

                       my son

I sense that you sense it

Yet what we leave

                 we carry

It is no mud

                 we dry

on our boots.

The saliva we swallow

Must ever dwell

                 down there.