When I Criedour brown and all too-white Pajero
bumped and chortled along the dust vein roads
of Uganda
my grainy moist eyes
stared unknowing like fresh rabbits
in moonlight
until the girl
in the dirty lemon dress
solidly barefoot
turned.
bumped and chortled along the dust vein roads
of Uganda
my grainy moist eyes
stared unknowing like fresh rabbits
in moonlight
until the girl
in the dirty lemon dress
solidly barefoot
turned.
casting
ambivalent breathtaking dark
eyes into my unrest
unsettling all my confidence
speaking for the orphans
I had walked among
and carried
like Jesus
without divinity
and helpless
as I helped them down
the mountainside
back to banana
leaf homes
ambivalent breathtaking dark
eyes into my unrest
unsettling all my confidence
speaking for the orphans
I had walked among
and carried
like Jesus
without divinity
and helpless
as I helped them down
the mountainside
back to banana
leaf homes
1 comment:
sorry I missed your phone call last night though I didn't have a choice but to smile at your message. This is a nice poem which gives me a sense of the problem of whiteness and obvious awkward otherness in a place like Uganda. part of the problem is incommensurablity of mentalies which they and we possess, I don't really know what that little girl in yellow dress is thinking. another is the poverty and violence which is also obvious and apparent and equally impossible.
Bannana leaf homes.
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