Colonial Girl's School

I remembered this poem while I was talking to a younger sister of mine with a situation she was facing in my old school. It seemed only too relevant...

Colonial Girls School

Borrowed images

willed our skins pale

muffled our laughter

lowered our voices

let out our hems

dekinked our hair

denied our sex in gym tunics and bloomers

harnessed our voices to madrigals

and genteel airs

yoked our minds to declensions in Latin

and the language of Shakespeare

Told us nothing about our selves

There was nothing at all

How those pale northern eyes and

aristocratic whispers once erased us

How our loudness, our laughter

debased us.

There was nothing left of ourselves

Nothing about us at all

Studying: History: Ancient and Modern

Kings and Queens of England

Steppes of Russia

Wheatfields of Canada

There was nothing of our landscape there

Nothing about us at all

Marcus Garvey turned twice in his grave.

'Thirty- eight was a beacon. A flame.

They were talking of desegregationIn Little Rock, Arkansas, Lumumba

and the Congo. To us mumbo-jumbo.

We had read Vachel Lindsay's

vision of the jungle.

Feeling nothing about ourselves

There was nothing about us at all

Months, years, a childhood memorising

Latin declensions(For our language
--'bad talking'--
detentions)

Finding nothing about us there

Nothing about us at all

So, friend of my childhood years

One day we'll talk about

How the mirror broke

Who kissed us awake

Who let Anansi from his bag

For isn't it strange how

northern eyes

in the brighter world before us now

Pale?

- Olive Senior