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.