The Foundlings by Angela Cheveau

The Foundlings by Angela Cheveau

Carved from the corners of these city streets faces forever set in marmoreal, moonlit, stone, we are creeping out of the shadows of ‘this peaceful dome’ we are coming, branded by poverty and scorched with a sin not ours to shoulder, want singed into the holes in our clothes, lack lodged in our throats from the streets we come clothed in tattered rags and stitched dreams, from rot and ruin, from sickening squalor and the stale stench of need from rank cellars and cess-filled crevices we come crawling out of grime-soaked doorways drenched in gloom, from fatherless homes, from penniless, starving, mothers we come from dirt and decay, the dying and the dispossessed, from the poor, the pauper, the penurious pinch of lives drowning in detritus, beggared at birth we are the rotten buds, the canker of corruption, spent blooms of mercantile misery and maritime wealth, the spoils of this colonial curse carried heavy upon our shoulders, we are the tabula rasa inscribed with the will of the state blank slates on which the world writes its wicked ways but we are coming, we are coming, not for retribution but to tell how we rose up from our destitution, how we rose up high above our station by being blessed with an education we are coming, hear our wooden clad feet clattering across this cobbled courtyard the coarse wool of our stiff clothes scraping at your skin the veil between us stretched gossamer thin, scent the sour smell of beer brewed for breakfast the buttermilk on our breath, hot in your ear, we are here, we are the whistle of wind raising hairs on your arms, we are the whispers you hear in the dark, we are the shadows shifting on the stairwell if you squint you might catch the glint of our needles, hear the scratch of our quills on the skrip, might feel our cool cheeks press against the back of your hand we are coming, two by two, hand in hand, we come in our ribboned bonnets and cloth caps, battered boots with holes in our soles, the sound of our chaunts haunt the corners of your mind, our footsteps resounding through cold empty corridors, locked doors, our muffled

mutterings mouthed in the quiet spaces, church pews echo with the sound of our scriptures, we are coming, we breathe soft in the stillness between your words, willing our voices to once more be heard, we scamper amongst the lines that you write, willing you to uncover our plight, tugging at your mind in the middle of the night we are always hiding just out of sight, everywhere you look, crawling out from every nook, dirty faced, we watch from these oval windows silhouetted against the dying light, sepia tinted sunset fading we are lambent lights flickering soft in the shadows, we are here to say we existed, to say that we mattered, we are the heartbeat of this city built on the blood of slavery and empire, we are risen once more from the darkness to regain our voices, our faded faces pressed, like petals, between the pages of your mind our fingerprints smudged on this glass, our stories seeping through cracks in the concrete bleed in to brick, our words, carefully carved into the weathered stone of this crumbling façade we are liver birds lit by the sinking sun we are the throbbing heart of this place, of these streets, our voices pulse through your veins, the silver sliver of the river Mersey winds through our bones and yours, pools in our eyes, we are here with you, rising up from the ashes of history our bones burning bright, untouched by Times scouring sand we are reaching up with our tiny hands unearthed, we are rebirthed, by digging your pen deep in the dust, ploughing the soil of our stories you bring us to light, and highlight our glories, and we are here, we are here, we are found! At last.