Riddle Road Mark E8

One Saturday afternoon, I walked around Ridley Road market in east London and this was my response to its sights and sounds. I performed it as spoken word at London’s Iklektic arts club

Synagogues read bible stories each week
In last weekend’s, people spoke a common speech.
Built a city with Babel, its tower
Neared the heavens to rival god’s power.
Afraid, he mixed up their language; Babel grew no further
People scattered; no one understood each other.
‘Babel’ is the etymon of ‘babble’- this city was Babylon
Tongues waggled and haggled in this original metropolitan.

Now I happened on Dalston’s BabyLon-don market
Ridley Road? Riddle road- that’s much more like it.

First riddle: who conducts this cacophony into a choral symphony?
Orchestra plays reggae from sunrise throughout the day.
Majek Fashek greets us, welcoming us to the Promised Land
Linval Thompson shares heartbreak
Romain Virgo’s infidelities didn't go as planned.
Caribbean patois provides riddim
West African harmonies gossip women wisdom.
Subcontinent melodies rise and fade
The tempo: fishmonger’s mallet and butcher’s blade.

Giggling accents exchange chuckling chorus
Laughter’s a currency that’s culturally porous.
Different movements as bargain hunters stalk stalls
How much ‘bread and honey’- money?
This: a ‘Lady Godiva’- fiver
That: an ‘Ayrton Senna’- tenner’.
Coins clink; reaching for ‘sausage and mash’- cash.

Second riddle: contradictory juxtaposition.
Balkan accordion beggars belief: the poor economic system.
Socialist prophet warns about profit
Down with the corporatist state!
Fuelled by anti-capitalist hate.
Protecting the workers, but where are the working class tones?
It would be quite rich to hear mockney from middle class homes.

Final riddle: ghostly rhymes no longer heard haunt in cliched clues.
Cockney code when criminals needed to collude?
Eastenders is still alive, just reborn with the latest east enders.
Migrant generations create new urban versions
Creole confusions evolve cosmopolitan fusions.
Diaspora hymns yet universal themes.

Now do we still seek a common speech?
If a new tower, where would it reach?
What’s to fear?
What shall we see? What shall we hear?
Wait!
Would this just be for more commerce and trade?
Or could it raise us above political tirade?
Let’s gather ourselves to be divinely aligned
As Majek Fashek reminds us: Promised Land is state of mind.