Bleached
Angela Croft

Sipping lime tea on the balcony
of Hotel Maris, I watch a village
skitter off an open lorry, go barefoot
over gravel, saris unfurl, girls shin up
scaffolding, flutter above Cathedral Road,
oxcarts and rickshaws trundle below,
kick up dust like chili powder,
naked toddlers sprawl on rubble,
catch bubbles from a hosepipe
writhing round the building site.

Relays of boys pass pans of mortar
up to the girls poised on girders
four storeys high, fashioning a tableau
in the sky, where oiled youths toil
in bandanas, their sweat sizzling,
except for the dazzler who thrashes
the air with a black umbrella,
calls the shots over rooftops of Madras,
mops his brow, checks his watch
                  flops back in his chair.

A collection of Angela Croft’s poems entitled Dancing with Chagall has been published in Caboodle by Prolebooks and includes the work of six poets. http://www.prolebooks.co.uk/ 

Angela’s note on the poem: Building in India is still risky. When I visited in 1991 I watched girls shinning up bamboo scaffolding, toddlers left to play on rubble below and was reminded of this when a building collapsed in Chenai last year, the final death toll put at 61 including 20 women. Fortunately I saw no such tragedy, but news reports say India has seen ‘frequent building collapses, many blamed on lax safety and substandard construction materials’ – leading to arrests of construction company officials.

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