Gurjit Nahal
Knock-out man
Dense smoke from a fortressed Midlands foundry
dances and drifts
through graffiti kicked streets,
smothering high-rise block as it lifts,
past wind torn Bollywood posters
past white turbaned pensioners
benched between the Red Lion and the temple.
Dances and drifts
through space and time
past ‘Rivers of Blood’
past years of cold immigrant welcome
to arise from a beedi of a villager
carting scorched sugar cane market way;
the white Brahmin bull salivating as it heaves
and shifts an overspilling cart load,
grudgingly stepping up pace
with each cussing prod of the villager’s stick.
At this point in time,
at this point in space
my grandfather once sat,
safe from the whip lashing rays of sun,
beneath the soothing tiger-shade of a pipal tree;
recuperating within the family farm,
as generations of men before him,
having been beaten down
in another round with the bullock-plough
The burning beedi enkindled
a southern gateway vision
of fuming merchant ships
a voyage for far-off foreign fields.
He dreamt of Great Britain
the land of Lords, machines, untold wealth
and alluring pearl-skinned women
shielding lust within beaming parasols.
As black-market cargo he soon sailed
for the place the day dreams embraced
only to find a dark new home,
choked, blistered and caked in racist jabber
amongst smoldering heat and molten iron
to beat copious sparks from a hammer.
Page(s) 42-43
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