Inheritance

Inseminated with a long needle
into this land,
I was born screaming
in a three thousand year old tongue.

I have grown now,
and my eyes see the world the
in technicolour optimism
that I inherited from my father.
From my mother,
I have in my blood-
lullabies, stories, that she
carried, wrapped in the folds
of her bosom
where we I once listened-
the story of the great tree,
from which we were flung far
like apples,
and the song of a river,
which flowed from the hair of a three eyed god.

We have appropriated well,
the old and the new.
When we cry,
our words
are only as old as us.

Bastards of a sort-
there is no earth that is our own.
We preserve us like mangoes,
in little pots of clay,
but the city smells seep in
and accelerate our decay.

An when we die,
we carry to our grave-
dust, smells and decaying gold
from all the lands that our feet once called home.
Home is deceptive, like in life,
in death too,
it is where we roam.