“There are people in the world, I imagine, who are born and die in the same town, maybe even in the same house, or bed. Creatures without migration: have they not lived a life because they have not moved? What of the migratory los González, moving from one place to another and marking every stopping place with angst? What kind of alternative is that? For once my father and I are thinking thinking the same way, sharing a similar yearning for our starting points to have been different, for our final destination to be anything other than the tearful, resentful arrival it is likely to be.” Rigoberto González, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa
When I wrote the prompt last week, February 14, Brooklyn, In Memory Most Green, I wrote from my passion for the place to which my family immigrated and in which I grew up. I wrote from my respect for the grit I’ve almost always encountered in immigrants and refugees. I wrote from an appreciation for my country’s highest and best ideals, however much we so often fail to fulfill them. I wrote from a place of gratitude: by what unearned grace am I safe and not running for my life across some bomb-riddled landscape?
Several of the poems shared here today by poets Lisa Ashley, Paul Brookes, Mike Stone, Sonja Benskin Mesher and Anjum Wasim Dar remind me of my father’s sighs. I barely knew the man, but I do remember his lament: “a-MHE-rrreee-ka. a-MHE-rrreee-ka.” Life was hard for him in the beloved city. Contrary to the mythology of the day, the streets weren’t paved with gold. He was something of a linguist but few people knew his language, his culture, his history.
Enjoy this collection and …
Note: I am going to be moving to a new place and will put The Poet by Day on hiatus after a few more posts that are in the hopper. Hence, Wednesday Writing Prompt will not return until March 21. The March issue of The BeZine will be published on the 15th as scheduled. It’s currently in the works. Updated submission guidelines will be available on March 25 along with the next theme.
Reluctant Immigrant
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Emma Lazarus
Plaintive song sung in childhood, beloved melody that touched my heart,
Often tired, sometimes wretched, always poor, though not homeless
Before I understood the words, I knew the yearning
to belong, to fit in, to be accepted—we were outsiders
Immigrated to the west, escaped, searching for a better life
I left family behind, severed ties for years, survived
He was forced to flee the genocide, board the boat,
Fighting his friends to go to his wife and child, already dead, they said
Landed in New York, no English, cooked for men like him in the hostel
Once a proud Armenian, now a conquered, bereft, shamed man
Reluctant immigrant to a strange land, mourning his home, far away
Arranged second marriage, nine children born on a farm, a life lived, survived
Trauma lived and re-lived, DNA passed down the generations, his story lost
No golden doors for him, just a desire to blend in…and forget
Grandfather to father, father to daughter, I stop the cycle of abuse
Exiles that no God, no Lady Liberty could return home, sheltered here
Safe now, loved, loving others, a good life carved out of pain and shame
He survived that 1915 holocaust, I am, we are, his legacy, immigrants yet.
© 2018, Lisa Ashley (www.lisaashleyspiritualdirector.com)
Refugee
is good. To belong
is wrong. Be homeless.
Mortgages and rents are chains.
Tread the world without burden.
Find a banquet in a crumb.
A glassful in a droplet.
Warmth in a newspaper blanket.
Comfort is a concrete underpass.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
Refugees Rule Each
Nation. The seat of power
is one that must travel.
If it was to ever stop
the populace would revolt.
Folk who stay in one place
are a public nuisance
who don’t get rid of their own
trash, who have a reputation
as thieves from the greater majority
who are travellers. Stayers
Put pressure on others as they insist
on a place to put down roots,
occupy a piece of land when all
land is in common to be used by all.
Stayers cordon off land with fences
which restrict travel and onward journey.
From A World Where (Nixes Mate Press, 2017)
© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
Our Edge
Each time it is a border,
an end of the road,
a new building,
where I am asked same questions
“What’s your name?
Where are you going?
Why?”
I am discovering my story,
remembering where I have
been, but I recall it as
a
border,
an end of the road,
a new building,
where I am asked same questions
“What’s your name?
Where are you going?
Why?”
© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
My Daddy
A soldier moves Dad
with the butt of his rifle.
“Why, Dad?”
“They don’t know where
we belong.” He says.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
.. wouldst thou be pm, an abbreviation..
archaic or dialect question, in appropriate. a lowly start
with slight misgivings, i come arrived from the country, an immigrant
here.
if the task came to me unlikely, i should sew profusely. a safe bet in that
something grows decently.
do you know how to stitch a lie, when all about grow honesty? mine was
white last year,
now nothing germinates.
the question is irreverent, no disrespect meant. forgive me, this is the second
time. this time,
i shall stay.
despite my nationality.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)
#russian
‘i came from another country, you know,
some time ago. i lived in the jungle’
yes.
‘i have been here so long, i feel i belong’
yes.
‘ they call me an immigrant’
said the bear, sadly.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)
.shopping in town.
wednesday, the shops shut early.
here.
there are still tourists around.
or new people. i bought some sweets,
a thimble,a packet of screws, one
light bulb.
chatted about face book in the mongers.
i moved here in 1993. I am an immigrant.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)
. the questionaire .
is this a mill, or is it a shop,
is it both, when did the looms stop?
twenty years now sir, yet you can see some
working elsewhere.
shall i write it down, all the pattern,
and most of the history? it has different fibres,
yet mainly wool in it.
these are made in yorkshire, the bags are italian,
yet i am from wales, an immigrant they say, yet we
are all from another place originally.
we came from the sea.
so let us move things about.
cloth by cloth.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)
. another country .
grandma came from malta, or was it
gibraltar, anyhow dad was very dark.
his hair remained so, with help and support.
i came from england to live here with you
#thebear.
also from another country.
i hear there is trouble in the village.
yes. i am scared they will shout
and say go home.
another country.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)
On a Passage from the Mishna
….(Raanana, November 17, 2017)
It is written that whoever saves a life
It’s as though he saved a world
And whoever snuffs out a life
It’s as though he snuffed out a world,
And why is that?
It’s because that when we walk
We walk with an entire world in front of us
And we walk with a whole world behind us
On either side of us
Above and below us
So we are six worlds saved or destroyed
And who can know from whence will come the savior
How he’ll look or what he’ll do,
So whoever saves a life
It’s as though he saved himself
And whoever kills a life
It’s as though he killed himself.
Note:
The fourth chapter of the Mishnaic tractate of Sanhedrin “whoever destroys a single life … is considered … to have destroyed the whole world and whoever saves a single life … is considered … to have saved the whole world” sometime prior to 250 A.D.
© 2017, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works)
A Visitor
…..(Raanana, January 10, 2018)
A multiplication table,
Two times two is four,
She could read a multiplication table
And you’d swear it was poetry
But when she’d read you her own poem
It’d sound like her skin was torn from her soul,
Like she’d invented meaning in your mind.
She was a visitor,
She didn’t come from here.
© 2018, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works)
Call of the Whippoorwill
…..(Raanana, January 30, 2018)
O Whippoorwill, O Whippoorwill,
I alone do hear your plaint.
It comes from deep inside my breast,
Would that I could let it out
To fly free singing,
But no such birds exist here
In the promised land.
Note: This poem expresses how I often feel as an American-expat-Israeli-immigrant in Israel.
© 2018, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works)
The Old Colossus
…..((an alternate plaque for our Statue of Liberty))
…..(Raanana, February 16, 2018)
What have I done
What
have
I
done
to warrant these insults and injuries
to our once rich lands,
our once free skies,
and our once clear waters?
You’ve stripped me of my soil,
you’ve fouled my air,
and you’ve diverted and poisoned my waters.
Have you found another land,
another sky,
or another water to love?
Or have you no soul anymore
to love any land,
any sky,
or any lake or river?
Take what you will from me
then leave me alone
and I will recover without you
but what will you do without me?
What
will you
do without
me?
[Note: This poem is addressed, not to fresh-off-the-boat-or-plane immigrants, but to those who have forgotten that they are immigrants and take their country for granted.]
© 2018, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works)
Born in Srinagar Kashmir, migrated to adopted country Pakistan in 1950 with my mother and sister..travelling in a refugee convoy, escorted by soldiers crossed the border at Sialkot.
Title: Partition
(Inspired by T S Eliot )
August is the cruelest month, bare branches
Sprouting tiny greens,
life bursting from the lifeless,
A rising,
mixing sorrow of defeat with defiance,
Spring rain drizzles consistently,
snow suddenly surprised us
We stopped in the plains,
leaving the mountains’
Went in half daylight so we should have
Known the path,
and the unknown traversed rarely,
So we should have known the faith,
and the faithful and the Emperors of Ice creams-
Not long ago, when I was a child,
was carried across borders
frightened, slept in a camp for two nights,
-wonder how Mother felt? She never spoke
About those days, then on we
came to Murree Hills, and felt free
And I knew not, was I taking refuge or was it a
New land?
What was left in enemy hands, where
Are the roots that make a family?
Out of the masses who survived who committed
Suicide-you cannot say or guess even for you
Have seen only images and heard only broken voices
Who lost half the thought in trying to forget
Spoke not all-scenes of horror
Heaps of bodies cut and slayed
Blood splattered on trains roads and fields
Death, for a cause? Yet not so or was it?
Many went South, separated, lost, confused-
All said ‘we shall go back, one day’
The Day never came-
And then the beginning of the end-
One by one
Who has seen Spring again, after the Fall
Providence persists prevails
Acceptance and non-acceptance is, what ails
Unreal cities, unreal people, so unlike what
Was expected-
War War War and again War-
When will it end, fear strikes within
Shelter is scarce, fashion abounds and all
Is a show off! Young dead glorified
on the mini screen, what are they dying for
now? Half the barren land, minerals in ranges
The enemy changed and we thought ’this is Right-
People crowd the roads , daily beggars are children
And who said ‘we shall have enough, and peace”
Mountains and Rocks
Mountains are dangerous, no rocks will give
Shelter, there is no water, nor wells
A waste it becomes, filth in the drains overflowing
And the big man’ said’ we have worked hard’
But the mountains will not protect,
Truth is linked , Faith is strong
It will not be long when the Shadow
Will turn to Light and the darkness will go-
Go in the shadow of the mountain
Sit by the stream and clean all
The mind and soul, wash away to the sea
Impurity, or else be prepared to face,
a tsunami, or the jolts and shakes
there is still a chance-look! Be the Dance
not the dancer, in the circle of life
Come to a still point with Nature
Where nothing matters anymore-
Think and feel, help and heal, the needy
Feed the hungry, for I can see-there comes
Someone-keeps close and watches , ever present
Who leads us on unseen and the Third we say
Who helped us –its not our doing but The Mercy
Of The Merciful-
Bow bow bow –pray pray pray…
Welcome love from above , eternal peace will stay
© 2018, Anjum Wasim Dar
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