Igcse English Language a

Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom

Then all the children of Cocoa Bottom went to see Mr. Samuel 's electric lights .
They camped on the grass bank outside his house, their lamps filled with oil , waiting for sunset, watching the sky turn yellow, orange .
Grannie Patterson across the road peeped through the crack in her porch door .
The cable was drawn like a pencil line across the sun .
The fireflies waited in the shadows, their lanterns off .
The kling-klings* swooped in from the hills, congregating in the orange trees.
A breeze coming home from sea held its breath; bamboo lining the dirt road stopped its swaying, and evening came as soft as chiffon curtains : Closing. Closing.

Light!
Mr. Samuel smiling on the verandah – a silhouette against the yellow shimmer behind him – and there arising such a gasp , such a fluttering of wings, tweet-a-whit , such a swaying, swaying .
Light! Marvellous light!
And then the breeze rose up from above the trees, swelling and swelling into a wind such that the long grass bent forward stretching across the bank like so many bowed heads. And a voice in the wind whispered :
Is there one among us to record this moment? but there was none – no one (except for a few warm rocks hidden among mongoose ferns) even heard a sound.
Already the children of Cocoa Bottom had lit their lamps for the dark journey home, and it was too late – the moment had passed .

Marcia Douglas
Kling-klings*: birds (Greater Antillean Grackles)