Uncommon Banyan II: The Tender’s Call
An acceptance speech in verse upon appointment as inaugural Commonwealth Poet Laureate Delivered at Commonwealth Foundation, Marlborough House, June 12,…
‘Only men?’ she speaks into the mass
gathered at Satan’s gate to protest
hell’s conditions. ‘Where are the women?’
‘Back on the plantation,’ a young man spits,
‘picking the tea, keeping the moon in orbit,
the fires burning.’ Little does he know,
the flames are asleep among the trees,
the fields ripe with tongues of women’s voices.
Photograph courtesy of Janet Steel
