‘Boy’

‘Boy’

‘Boy’

When, brother, will you be?
How will you be?
For you are not yet.
A ‘boy’ you are called
by milk-plastered lips
and you undo your hat
to bare that musty dome.
Yet a ‘boy’ you remain.
Your unpensioned thirty-year job
– unpensioned even in kind –
you have faithfully groomed,
while bosses go and come,
renewing that boyishness,
inheriting you and the garden,
but ever ‘boy’, never ‘man’.
Maybe a bigger garden will
turn you to a field-man.
Did you tell your boss
you have fathered, husbanded like him?
Does he know your son
lectures to professors in exile?

Booted on ancient buttocks
by weak-boned madams
who rob your humility
implanting slavery and hate.
Even yoking you
with manufactured allegiances,
yet your blood-left rhythm speaks
When history chapters allow.