Dirty sidewalks, with old flyers melded
Into the cement, where they are stamped black
By hundreds of insouciant feet.

Here exotic-skinned women with gold ornaments pasted between their eyebrows
And red dots disappearing into their hairlines

Here children, so heartbreakingly small, with dark eyes so large and full of knowledge that I cannot access

with my white skin
and dark red hair
I lack the password to this
Amazing world

Where culture is bound up with hair, under gauzy veils.
Men walk proudly, their legs free in sulus,
like Scottish men in their kilts,
only darker, more compact, more full of
dark, intense secrets.

Somewhere, between the smell of corn,
the ripe sharp hint of cheddar
(from the side of the road, mysteriously)
and the sights of sugarcane and palm trees

lurks the scent
of a culture too foreign
to be identified
by my pale, rounded nose
and the scenery of a nativity
too obscure for my
blanched eyes
to decipher.

08/02/2002

Posted on 08/02/2002
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