Jamaican Independence Day, 2006

Now is not the time to repeat the lies

that once made us happy, to dismiss

the subtle messages of winds that brought

human cargo to our island and exchanged

sweat for the sweetness of sugar cane—

a man’s worth measured in bundles

of rattoons, sprouting in a field of guns

carried by boys barely awakened

to the urgency of their dreams,

but would never see home,

girls who barely understood the demand

of blood, but would never see their daughters

grow old—betrayal of the Lignum Vitae’s

ever widening rings that survived hurricanes

and drought, our birthright bartered

for a few years of peace on a sliver of sand,

our toil put to rest in the pulse of the mangrove.

Here the podcast for the poem: Jamaican Independence Day, 2006

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