City Kids One little boy is using scrambled letters to write the architectural plans in his mind. One little girl


is using the building blocks of her gestures to form sentences in familiar foreign accents.


A city is its children,


with their scrambled-word-fi lled heads and familiar dialects.


They notice the feather-trail behind each beggar’s footfall, they see the wing-hidden swords.


They know the city’s secrets. They’ve heard the ghosts in the park, they know the football chants.


It’s the tiger-striped kids with mud splattered on each knee who understand the city.


Who savour each street’s smell: the sizzling sausages,


the rope-pulled chapatis. The little ones notice


the twitch behind the curtains, the house with the demon dog, the fl ower-fi lled roadside.


This city birthed the children who daily wander its streets and see nature refl ected in the hue of their blazers. Their teachers are princesses, they hear the sigh of statues.


Poem pp.4-5.indd 2


09/10/2019 14:36


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