and the brown-skinned girl is crying

and the woman sings a hymn they sang on sunday

and the man with a suit and tie and big black car

takes hold of the little girl’s arm
and the car and the man and the girl drive off

and the hymn becomes a wail

and the girl stares back at the disappearing woman

and the car arrives at a large brick building

and the man in the suit and tie hands over the girl

to a woman in a dark blue dress and drives away
and thirty brown-skinned girls sleep side by side

in one long hall in nightly silence

and they take their turns in washing up

and scrub the floors each saturday and take cold showers

and they cook and sweep and sew until they’re housemaids

fit to serve the pale-faced city-ladies or the farmers’ wives
and the brown-skinned woman sees the car drive past

and the man with the suit and tie walks up

to her neighbour’s door where a woman sings a hymn

they sang in church on sunday