if you stay too long in the third world

The following poem was given to me by my beautiful adoptive and adopted Australian mother, Connie. Sitting outside in the cool breeze on her back patio, she read this poem out loud to me somehow inferring that I would understand. Understand it, I did and appreciate it, I do. Thank you, Connie, for being being so poetically sound and always having just the right words!

if you stay too long in the third world

you learn

to hawk and spit like an old woman

you become

unfit for dinner parties

in the lands of the well fed

having dropped out of yoru original country

into this space from which

the coast with its oceans and gardens

the party on the terrace

the splash of green water over the bow of the yacht

are images projected on a screen

whoe unreality you resent

the other side of the coin whose gain

is the loss you see all around

if you stay too long in the third world

death becomes a fact of life    the old

die quickly       the young

can't count on being old       this termite death

hollows out the roots of endeavour

as children leave toys you abandon

your previous explantations

if you stay too long in the third world

it will fill the space in your psyche

with a differnt discourse

you will begin to recongise

the unfamiliar in the unfamiliar

the outline of a landscape

in a pattern of dots

the faces of relations in the tragice and violent

repitions of a song        the patterns of daily living

in the holy steps of a dance

if you stay too long in the third world

you will become

accustomed to silence and observation

leading to understanding

to abundance and malnutrition

immutably hand in hand

when that eager and rational voice

whose creature you are

whose instrument you had vounteered to become

grates like the radio on a bad day

you switch it off

if you stay too long in the third world

you will be unable to leave

-Lee Catalidi, Women who live on the Ground