! Ika

Ika, I’d love to write a poem I’d be proud to write a poem for you which would be about you because you deserve a poem which would be about you of course but also deeply, deeply, about the tragic, comic, farcical ironies of skin colour, history, earnings, empire, class, prejudice, sheer human thoughtlessness and cruelty; and yet the essential goodness of mankind and it would somehow have to cover your proud Jamaican family, stalwart, respected in the community and then the way that Britain invited its fine colonial soldiers, airman, sailors, who had fought and lived and died for a land they had never known, for an Empire shortly to break up, to come to Britain and continue the proud record of colonial servicemen supported by our web of aristocracy which knew and served and loved its Empire full of human beings, humanity - so that you, now retired from the services, are a hospital orderly who is on nodding terms with lords and ladies, millionaires and nobodies and friend to everybody, who has suffered the irony of being mugged by white guys disguised as joggers because you dress so smart… I think you’ve never quite recovered from this wound they’d never guess at… and all this human thoughtlessness and more, you turn upside down by shopping at Harrods food store on a hospital orderly’s pay; while your nephews and nieces educated in Jamaica and the States are so magnificent, and well-off too… there’s so much I’d like to put down on paper, because I’m so proud to have you as a friend, who also represents more recent human history than a book of history could contain; and yet you’ve never lost your dignity thank God so this is just to say, you deserve a poem, Ika, and I’d be honoured to write it but I can’t even begin you know how it is yes indeed you do