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.