Lacovia Road
Lacovia road
Here once the bambo trees
Dance like native girls
In native half-nakednesss
And farmers trudge a way
Not so long nor forbidding now
Along the banks where lizards lazed
A scampering of children
And trees are with sturdier concrete replaced.
The slant of rain obscures the dry of sun.
Lacovia road
I cannot tell which house you use to live
My old landmark
Of public standpipe is gone
And perhaps lovers
Meet in virtual space of idleness
Instead of where the gossip flowed
And fill the empty lives
With long leashes of control
Dripping from tireless tongues.
Lacovia road
And a fluttering dust of memory
Like paper littering the school yard
New mansions are strewn among the grass
Old cottages gone
Gone too the wattle and daub familiarity
Where we huddled out of the rain
And shared bammy and avocado
And old stories of Kujo crawling through the sugarcane
Among the crocodiles and in their skin
And the British fright to see the thing
Up like rabbit running for more than life
Lacovia road
And the big river still brims below
The old capital
Rearing for recognition without the mango trees
And shrimp sellers at the side of road
Without women burdened with cassava load
I long to smell the fry fish still
These stable buttress of the old economy
Replaced by the late coming
And harsh selection of a spindly modernity
Juxtaposed against a vast and ancient history
Of moments eternal.
Copyright © David Smalling | Year Posted 2012
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