OH WOMAN

(sung to the tune of "Yellow Bird")

Oh woman, all clothed in a debt like this
Oh woman, no agricultural credit
How you going to get food tomorrow day
Look de children dem hanging round yuh hem
De shopkeeper say no more trust today
Malnutrition relay

Oh woman, you have no title to land
Oh woman, your man have little to land
In the house and land you working so hard
No leisure you get only toil and sweat
We can share the work
And don't leave us broke
Then we both go and fete

Oh woman, a quarter acre you get
Oh woman, this ain't an economic plot
You get less money than de men dem do
Even if is the same work we do
We need equal pay
For our work today
To be happy and gay.

(This song was made up by the teams at the popular theatre workshop in St. Vincent)

Source:

CAFRA NEWS: Newsletter of the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action, March-May, 1990, no.l, vol. 4, P.O. Bag 442, Ibnapuna, Trinidad and Tobago

Creation Fire

by Nelcia Robinson

WOMEN
Write of the Joy, Ecstasy,
Levity Dark times of living
Of Women
But most of all The pain...

Of loneliness
Being battered
Misunderstood
Responsibility without means

Creativity
Sisterhood
And underpinning faith
That gives birth to alternatives
In a system
That cannot work for women
One that loves things
And bruises people...

WOMEN
Write of Refusal to conform
Using Individual women's
Collective thoughts
To love people...
A self-renewing Metamorphic
CREATION FIRE!

from the newly published book by the author called Creation Fire: A CAFRA Anthology of Caribbean Women Poets