Prosperidad

[YRKB]

Prosperidad, 18th Century Sudamérican town
Iron-cast balconies, quaintly wound streets - cobblestoned
Campsis radicans creep up it's buildings, burst, shower down
In the breeze off outlying fields, painted blue and white shutters groan
and the flowers are blown...
Perhaps resting a second on lace and fringed parasols
Held by herederas of the Spanish high-born class
Only ever in the cloudless heat to make social calls
Helped out of carriages and ushered in fast.
The daughters of Masters - of the fields from where the winds come
the fertile red soils in which they root their sprawling mansiones
where the black-skinned, dripping men, women and children's work is never done
those who ask of Dios only death in all the single, silent prayers.
Whose ripped black backs ache, and red soles weep
who paid - are always paying - for Prosperidad's streets
that still yet stretch, and rise, and wind on out
until taking new shape in foreign mouths
who talk in fever of this booming town
where Lady Fortune lies in wait with panniers down
with arms outstretched, calling in gay chime:
'Ravish me, Old Europe, now is our time!'

Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown

[kiz_paws]

Prosperidad, 18th Century Sudamérican town
Iron-cast balconies, quaintly wound streets - cobblestoned
Campsis radicans creep up it's buildings, burst, shower down
In the breeze off outlying fields, painted blue and white shutters groan
and the flowers are blown...
Perhaps resting a second on lace and fringed parasols
Held by herederas of the Spanish high-born class
Only ever in the cloudless heat to make social calls
Helped out of carriages and ushered in fast.
The daughters of Masters - of the fields from where the winds come
the fertile red soils in which they root their sprawling mansiones
where the black-skinned, dripping men, women and children's work is never done
those who ask of Dios only death in all the single, silent prayers.
Whose ripped black backs ache, and red soles weep
who paid - are always paying - for Prosperidad's streets
that still yet stretch, and rise, and wind on out
until taking new shape in foreign mouths
who talk in fever of this booming town
where Lady Fortune lies in wait with panniers down
with arms outstretched, calling in gay chime:
'Ravish me, Old Europe, now is our time!'

Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-BrownMy goodness that was powerful. I enjoyed this poem immensely. Very well done indeed. :)

[Hunteroid]

I had to make an account to post this... I find your poem subject abhorrent.

What I gathered from your poem is that Europe should be raped by swarthy foreigners and that fortune and prosperity await them once they dominate, subjugate and inevitably destroy Europe.

I hope I am mistaken but I doubt it.

[Danik 2016]

I enjoyed the poem. Reminds me a bit of Oliverio Girondo.
I understood it quite the other way round:

Built at the cost of "the black-skinned, dripping men, women and children's work is never done
those who ask of Dios only death in all the single, silent prayers.
Whose ripped black backs ache, and red soles weep" the town of Prosperidad is inviting Old Europe to ravish it, in other words, to exploit it.

[emerson1999]

I'm not sure if I'm completely correct about this but I believe it's the opposite, that the poem is about the European exploitation of less advanced areas during the 18th and 19th centuries, which is why the last line is "Ravish me, Old Europe, now is our time!" This line gives the information that the subjects of the poem are being "ravished" by Europe, not the other way around. But perhaps I just misunderstood it.