An Elusive Sense Of Belonging Copyright © Victor Weston 2011

A small boy from Brum
practiced each night (in Norfolk dialect)
“potaa-ah, tomaa-ah”
keenly needing to belong
as children threw stones at him
though his family were from this town

A shy youth was love-struck
Aurasa was a (South Pacific) Bali Hi Thai
he cried for her beauty to the moon
to Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto
her gentle kindly voice countered
“it is better to marry one’s own kind”

A young man living in Wales
looked wistfully across Offa’s Dyke
to the English border
beyond the Wye, a Jordan river
lay the promised land
of belonging
his father English, his mother Welsh

He had lived (by the Taff) in Grangetown
when it was white and working class
now it is settled Somali
women in black burkhas with their children
in the park, a mosque
the redundant church St Pauls is for sale

Returning to
the land of his birth, he finds her people much altered
gone all sense of self worth or belonging
rather it is the new British who value their identity
as they confidently step over indigenous “trash” outperforming, leaving them behind