Pictured above is Greyfriars Church in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago. The church my parents got married in and where as a child I went to Sunday School. The holy church my faithful aunts spent a lifetime of devotion and service. All torn down. All these places I knew are gone. A fete is island speak for a party and a lime is a social gathering.
I lived on Gray Street when I was a boy and rode my bike up hither ‘n yon. Now my home is a concrete parking lot and all its spirits ‘n souls are gone I sang at Greyfriars church as a child and learnt all about moth ‘n rust. I learnt nothing is permanent or fixed and it too fell into rubble ‘n dust I jumped ‘n danced at the Country Club when fete ‘n revelry came to town. Music played all night in the dance hall but its colonial past was torn down I worked at the old store on Broadway inside its chain doors ‘n iron cage. But now it sits a vacant lot condemned to history lost to a demolition age I loitered ‘n limed at the Pelican Inn in my rum diary in younger days. Up on Coblentz Avenue from its ruins the inn that stood has been razed I remember in my grandfather’s house when voices did echo every room. Now strangers walk among the dead and feels more like a family tomb I feel the reverberation of spirit ‘n soul that these forsaken places outlast. But I have watched life ‘n time erase the bricks ‘n mortar of my past Written: July 2025
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