Sunday, May 11, 2008

Civil living

Still, it's early yet outside the air is already expanding with heat,
No morning dew on the cracked earth in the backyard.
Cloudless sky, nothing to stop the bright yellow sun,
from beating mercilessly down on the earth.
Another hot day in the tropics.
By lunchtime the heat will be rising through our veins.

Colonial literature, the types of books written
when Britannia, the little robber nation, ruled the world.
The servants put out your bathwater at five and got to preparing supper.
Children were stilled and powdered while the ladies of the house, trussed up like so many
chickens in their layers of muslin prepared to welcome the conquering husband.
Pink gins, endless games of cricket, dropping calling cards,hosting dances for the amusement of the bored,
all very civilized. If you didn't conform to the rigidity of the system you were "letting the side down".
God forbid that you did. Stiff upper lip, grin and bear it, for God and King were the battle cry.
One simply did not go native.

And yet now, the descendants of those very folk, stalk our shores in search of a different adventure.
Flip flop shod, public bathsuit wearing, beer swilling, natives have they become. Here to worship the sun
they once protected their fair complexions from.

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