Many, many years ago I went to Arusha in Tanzania with a friend who had a Fairtrade connection with some artists out there. It was my first visit to a ‘poorer nation’ and I was quite affected by the poverty I saw and the contrast with the West. We met a young woman (from Hammersmith, W14) when we were there who was young, beautiful and, it’s fair to say, did not quite share the same values as we did. This poem is about her. 

She glanced at nail polish
And in the mirror saw
A beauty where an angel kissed
A face that lunched a thousand broken hearts

Her plane delayed by Roman skies
Her Africa packed in wood-carved souvenirs
Where Tanzanian hands had laboured, lost of love
And grasped for dollars in the balmy dusk

Her weight was on her mind
Her thoughts had turned to poison
Water to her western soul
A pitcher of eternal youth

And turned away, the beat
Was silence to her ears
But still continued on the edges
Of a world, her world apart