Here’s to those postcolonial Bards in white flannels
wielding the willow like their consonants and vowels,
spicing the English tongue with bouncing syncopation
reversing the swing of adverbs into wayward verbs.
Well-groomed in the ways of glorious uncertainty,
see how they stride the turf of Empire’s legacy
raising their bats to the protocol of the Canon
while hooking beyond the boundary any loose noun.
They’ve learnt from pitches that syntax too can crack.
The thing is to keep the wicket of the soul intact,
not flashing at tempting black and white slogans,
not letting history’s wounds halt the harvest of runs
but acknowledging the heart’s global pavilion,
rejoicing at the crease in commonwealth communion.
