Serena Malcolm

When we left our homes for England,

We expected streets adorned with gold,

Because that is what they promised,

Because that is the dream they sold,


So we dressed up in our Sunday best,

Straight backs and heads held high,

And we arrived with big aspirations,

Based on little White lies,

Because the streets were paved with… concrete,

And filled with spiteful eyes

That watched us, daily, waiting

For us to feed into their bias


We passed walls graffitied with slurs,

And windows filled with boards

That banned us – and the Irish –

And lumped us in with dogs,


Sometimes we shrugged it off,

But oftentimes it was hard to ignore,

Especially when they carved their malice

Into our shiny, new front doors,


But behind those doors was freedom,

Our islands in a sea of hate,

So we made our new homes a symbol

Of whence and why we came,


Who remembers front rooms?

Those brightly coloured troves,

Filled with endless, apt reminders

Of the dreams we dreamt back home,

No child would dare to enter

And had to covet from the threshold,

The doilies that lined every surface,

Beneath the trinkets trimmed with… gold,


You see we brought the treasure with us,

Never needed the English streets to shine,

Because the gilded glory from our dreams

Has been with us this whole time,


And we’ve passed those golden heirlooms

To our children, through our tales,

Through our culture, and our food,

Through old traditions new hopes unveil,


We don’t need the streets they promised,

Can’t you see we’ve paved our own?

Every brick can be traced from where we are now,

To the moment we left our homes.


Just as Empire Windrush journeyed,

Slicing through the hostile seas,

We, too, must forge on to new horizons

And in our wake leave great waves of legacy.

Image credit HTC One / Rex