Punt Trench Dam

By Nadia Sagar

 

Aback the cane-field

Along lusty fields of mottled stalk and punt trench dam

Houses stilted and unstilted

Blue green mud thick against walls of concrete and decaying wood

Ant trails like swollen veins

Crisscrossing greyed greenheart posts

 

Women washing clothes in cracked plastic tubs

Under the not yet sharp morning sun

Gabardine pants hung on paling staves

Banana suckers

Hanging low with unpicked fruit

Bird vine covering unclaimed spaces

 

Women on steps thinned by scrubbing

Picking lice from little heads bent

Lashes passing at every fidget

 

Brother Paul preaches the gospel

The congregation swells, the spirit descends

 

Chowtal and puja in Temple on Sunday morn

Mother Lakshmi, Mother Durga and Lord Shiva,

Pandit reads Sanskrit, fingers tracing faded words

Prasad and mittai bagged, folded legs catching cramp

 

In polyester briefs and panties, the children play

War break and tyres burning, tinnin cup knocking

Thief man coming

And black pudding lady basket piled high

With chicken foot souse and plantain chips

 

Pit latrines rank

The wiri–wiri tree by neighbour Nelly yard exploding

Gloriously

Rain and sun and gravel and mud

And days washed clean and smelling ripe

And the breeze cutting through the fields of cane

Slamming doors and drying beads of sweat

Births and deaths and beatings