The Shore Line Poem by Leonard Dabydeen

Once before the shore line
there were trees and houses
and streets and places
where children played
and now all washed away
chorus of movie songs
and prayers in mosques
where men dressed
in white cotton fabric
and filled their hearts
with richness of Ramadan
and now all washed away
in pouring rain
and monsoon mockery
floodgates of mud sling
belch entrails of rubbles
over places and people and things
in a deluge of ungrateful piety
and now all washed away
today my body is mud
and I am like swamp
remembering eating roti
sitting on a driftwood plank
once before the shore line.