Nothing's Changed (poem)
# Nothing's Changed (poem)

   Small round hard stones click under my heels, seeding grasses thrust bearded seeds into trouser cuffs, cans, trodden on, crunch in tall, purple-flowering, amiable weeds.
    of my lungs, and the hot, white, inwards turning anger of my eyes.
   Brash with glass, name flaring like a flag,
   it squats in the grass and weeds, incipient Port Jackson trees: new, up-market, haute cuisine, guard at the gatepost, whites only inn.
   No sign says it is: but we know where we belong.
   I press my nose to the clear panes,know, before I see them, there will be crushed ice white glass, linen falls, the single rose.
   Down the road, working man's cafe sells bunny chows. Take it with you, eat it at a plastic table top, wipe your fingers on your jeans, spit a little on the floor: it's in the bone.
   I back from the glass, boy again, leaving small, mean O of small, mean mouth. Hands burn for a stone, a bomb, to shiver down the glass. Nothing's changed.  - Tatamkulu Afrika

"Nothing's Changed" is a poem by Tatamkhulu Afrika. It is part of the AQA GCSE Anthology.

