ALL CLEAR, 1928




  1. I was beating chaklata when someone
  2. came shouting: A stranger man come!
  3. I dropped everything. Same way
  4. in my sampata, my house dress,
  5. my every day head-tie, I rushed to
  6. the square wondering: could it be?
  7. How many gathered there so long
  8. after our men disappeared into
  9. the black water dividing us from
  10. Puerto Limón, Havana, Colón
  11. knew it was he? Not his sons lost
  12. to a father fifteen years gone
  13. There he was. Leather-booted and
  14. spurred, sitting high on a fine horse
  15. Never spoke a word. This Spanish
  16. grandee sat on his horse and
  17. looked at us. Looked through us.
  18. Never could lump poverty. Used
  19. to say: Esmie, when I strike it rich
  20. in foreign what a fine gentleman
  21. I'll be. And you with your clear
  22. complexion will sit beside me
  23. your hands stilled from work
  24. like silk again (silk of my skin
  25. my only dowry!) Ashamed now of my
  26. darkened complexion, my work-blackened
  27. hands, my greying hair, a loosening
  28. of my pride (three sons with Mr. Hall
  29. the carpenter who took me in) I
  30. lowered my eyes and tried to hide.
  31. I needn't have bothered. He looked
  32. so troubled, as if he'd lost his way.
  33. And suddenly, with nothing said,
  34. he wheeled his horse and fled.
  35. And ever after we talked of the
  36. wonder of it. The stranger never
  37. spoke to anyone. Forgotten the young
  38. man who left home with a good white
  39. shirt (stitched by these hands and
  40. a borrowed black serge suit (which
  41. the owner never recovered), a heng-pon-me
  42. with four days of ration of roasted salt fish,
  43. johnny cakes, dokunu and cerasee for tea
  44. to tide him over to the SS Atrato
  45. lying in wait in Kingston Harbour.
  46. All, all the men went with our dreams
  47. our hopes, our prayers. And he
  48. with a guinea from Mass Dolphy
  49. the schoolteacher who said that boy
  50. had so much ambition he was bound
  51. to go far. And he had. Gathering
  52. to himself worlds of experience
  53. which allowed him to ride over us
  54. with a clear conscience. I never
  55. told anyone. For I would have had
  56. to tell his children why he hadn't
  57. sent money for bread, why his fine
  58. leather boots, why his saddle,
  59. his grey mare, his three-piece suit,
  60. his bowler hat, his diamond tie-pin
  61. his fine manicured hands, his barbered
  62. hair, his supercilious air. Never
  63. was a more finely-cut gentlemen
  64. seen in our square. And I trembled
  65. in anger and shame for the black limbo
  66. into which my life had fallen
  67. all these years till my hands touched
  68. the coarse heads of my young sons
  69. recalling me to a snug house clad
  70. with love. And I cried then, because
  71. till he came back I had not known
  72. my life was rooted. Years later
  73. I learned that his gentlemanly air,
  74. his polished boots, manners, and Ecuador
  75. gold bought him a very young girl of very
  76. good family in Kingston. And they wed.
  77. He, with a clear conscience.
  78. She, with a clear complexion.