Integration Poem by Robert Melliard

As a child I had a 'coloured' nurse
(actually I'm coloured too - I'm pink) .

Perhaps that's why I've always loved dark ladies:
their skin needs no bronzing, burning sun
and their lips are sooooo kissable!
(Mine are thin - unappealing I imagine.)

I once made love to a 'mulata'
on an overnight Mexican train.
The cactus-ridden desert slid on by
discreetly, as we lay
beneath a brightly 'coloured' blanket.

Next day, enthralled,
I asked her to to come to England,
but she was bound for the U.S. -
more opportunities there, I guess...

Thirty swift years later
I met a white South African
who said that his idea of God
was a beautiful 'coloured' lady
(one mustn't say 'black',
though it's fine to say 'white')
and the man was a conservative!

In the long term, racial integration
will be due to attraction of opposites.
Our great, great, great grandchildren
will be coffee-coloured
and therefore unprejudiced.

In Cuba and Brazil
(among other places)
this process is already going on.

I would have liked to join in,
but I'm afraid Naomi Campbell
never noticed me...