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Title: The Sikh Policeman: A British Subject
Author: Eunice Tietjens [
More Titles by Tietjens]
Of what, I wonder, are you thinking?
It is something beyond my world I know, something
that I cannot guess.
Yet I wonder.Of nothing Chinese can you be thinking, for you hate
them with an automatic hatred--the hatred of
the well-fed for the starved, of the warlike for
the weak.
When they cross you, you kick them, viciously, with
the drawing back of your silken beard, your
black, black beard, from your white teeth.
With a snarl you kick them, sputtering curses in short
gutturals.
You do not even speak their tongue, so it cannot be
of them you are thinking.
Yet neither do you speak the tongue of the master
whom you serve.
No more do you know of us the "Masters" than you
know of them the "dogs."
We are above you, they below.
And between us you stand, guarding the street, erect
and splendid, lithe and male. Your scarlet turban
frames your neat black head,
And you are thinking.
Or are you?
Perhaps we only are stung with thought.
I wonder.
Shanghai
[The end]
Eunice Tietjens's poem: Sikh Policeman: A British Subject
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