Caterbury (12 1/2 Upper King Street)
Other children wanted to see
Kingston with its bright lights and teeming markets
The contentious noise of cars, and loud rackets
Of tongues tattlering their glee
To watch the shrewd bargains at the finger tips
The clever hands, and the lissom swaying hips
Not I, the wind across the lea
For each season was school was done, we blown
Like mangoes from the trees, had destiny our own
And I yearned for a city
Different, where the houses are perched on rocks
Like one legged cranes, and the banana ship docks
And mento music decree
The swagger and the mood. Like a vulture's flock
My mother's leaning, held sway with pile and stock
On cliff face beyond the sea
Across the nervous bridge and there the Chinese shop
My civilization's edge, and there all bondage stop
For we were poor and free
What knew my father, with all his fancy pedigree
Of this world, he would be too appalled for me
His ethics such a bore to me
This was my Canterbury, my boyhood freedom, my
Only place where children slept and never did sigh.
And there each summer I
Like the sea tides sigh
With my heart kept faith to see my mother, dear
The flower of my eye
My oasis in the dry
Under the toll of the city's awful wear
Other children did cry
But O never, not I
As long as mother climbed the hill, I's be there still
Her, black, and patient face
Above the rubble's waste
Modeling for me, the power of the human will.
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