English as a Second Language
We came upon a line of English
eating dog, we thought, on plump bread
steamed and slathered with a drab yellow
chutney from a cart in the Kew Gardens.
Villains, they looked to us, offending
nature, but we asked the dog-wallah
for one apiece—me, your Gian uncle,
and the elder Sahota who held up
seven fingers, then pointed to the sky:
a code of theirs he’d broken.
The dog-wallah just shook his head,
counted our shillings, surrendered
three green glass bottles of 7Up,
three warm logs in aluminium.
In 1967, you could hear a song
by The Beatles on anybody’s radio,
but what did The Beatles know about us
huddled together in our conspiracy
on a bench beneath a kind of tree
I’d never seen before? Anyway,
we were young and having fun,
the shit-eating grin on Gian’s face
as we brought the dog meat to our mouths.
When you sack the villain’s estate,
you have to raid the villain’s kitchen.
You dress in his topcoat and drink his gin.
You set his horses free and drive them
home through the rain. You see? We weren’t
afraid. We didn’t come here to become
like them. We came here to eat.
