Something inside is laid wide like a wound,
some open passage that has cleft the brain,
some deep, amnesiac blow. We left
somewhere a life we never found,
customs and gods that are not born again,
some crib, some grille of light
clanged shut on us in bondage, and withheld
us from that world below us and beyond,
and in its swaddling cerements we're still bound.

Laventille (for V S. Naipaul) [1965]