jamaica española

they colonised the spaces made them strange
to those who had been there who promptly died
about their predecessors they freely lied
not them but providence did things so arrange
the place was theirs now their own sweet grange
to which by nomenclature they were tied
a place worth defending with the most saintly pride
a place of sugar and spice where cattle range
what would they have become if left alone
if they had not in their turn been displaced
into what sort of folk would they have evolved
we can't tell they might have come to atone
or might their consciences have misplaced
but into faded memory they've all dissolved