I will Carry My Exile in My Bones

I Will Carry My Exile Inside My Bones 

Like a ghost I walked the streets of my exile

Listening to silences

Seeing absences everywhere

No-one spoke my language, or looked like me

I became the most distinguished soul in Birmingham

I followed my blackness into nights of darkness

Until my bones began to sing ancestral songs

An old white man peering from the window

Of his third story flat

Shouted at his granddaughters playing outside

Don’t worry! That is an African student!

I knew then that

The Divide and rule law

Still rules