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Ted Harriott

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Going Home

 

You can feel it, hear it, see it.
Like a mangy dog or Death Row in the jail house,
There is even a stink to it.
Oppression makes a universal appeal to the senses of the free.
Share some of what you’ve got, it demands.
I know because I’ve been there.

All along the straight and endless dusty road
Through the flat land
It weighed like an irksome burden,
Bearing down on my shoulders like a loaded yoke,
Aching in my head and behind my eyes.

Out there in the countryside it was ever extant,
Announcing itself in the crushed, hushed voices
Of the people with lowered eyes
Who served, but not willingly,
Resentment unexpressed but present in their politeness.

It was visible in the bowed heads,
The reluctant pace of servitude -
Only apparently speedy and eager -
The eyes looking up when I had passed by.

I wanted to shout at them:
I’m not part of it. I don’t live here.
But I was too ashamed,
Possibly too afraid in that strange way
That is part of the oppressor’s armoury
Of laws that were never made,
Threats that are never voiced.
They can...

I was also embarrassed,
For this eternal road was the way out,
The highway to the border,
And I could take none of them with me.
I felt like a deserter.

So that, in the last miles, I tried not to feel excitement:
Not to feel the weight lifting from me.
But then I could see another flag,
A border policeman in boots that shone like mirrors
Free from the dust of oppression.
I could go home now.

 

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