Labour Day

On the bright parkway comes the throbbing drums The sound of the pan and sound of the horn The great crowd alive like a beehive hums And children gloating like goats in the corn Float after float like birds of paradise Skin and colours blending in mirth's devise The aroma of a thousand pots swells And weave again the tropic's magic spells. They do not know, they do not know how strange The revelry upon the grave where change Was bought with lives of men forever dead, They hung them who sought to eat cheaper bread. O that I was there now, massing, winding Where parade and hearse like time is moving.