Cane Gang - Olive Senior

 

Torn from the vine from another world 

to tame the wildness of the juice, assigned 

with bill and hoe to field or factory, chained 

by the voracious hunger of the cane 

the world’s rapacious appetite for sweetness 

How place names of my servitude mock me: 

Eden, Golden Vale, Friendship, Green Valley, 

Hermitage, Lethe, Retreat, Retirement, Content, 

Paradise, Phoenix, Hope, Prospect, Providence 

Each with the Great House squatting 

on the highest eminence 

the Sugar Works overlooking 

my master’s eye unyielding 

the overseer unblinking 

not seeing the black specks 

floating across 

their finely-crafted 

landscape 

At shell blow assembled the broken-down

bodies, the job-lots scrambled into gangs

like beads on a string O not pearls no just  

unmatched pairings the random bindings 

like cane trash no not like the cane pieces

laid out geometric and given names

and burning. 

http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/0106/olive_senior.htm