I sit on my coat
and think about home:
the warm cosy glow of the fire,
the smell of home baked bread…
I brush tears to the grass.
A small child wanders over,
sits down with a bump.
I glance at him,
and he gazes at me intently.
A sharp, blue gaze,
I offer him a piece of bread
and he takes it. A flicker of a smile.
I put my arm around his skinny shoulders.
Silently, together, we sit, and think, and cry.
"Refugees" by Martha Sprackland. Text as published on the website of The Poetry Society (UK) (1999). © Martha Sprackland. Reprinted by permission of the poet.Curator's note: Unable to sleep, I prepared this post in the middle of the night. Surely there is something more each of us can do, right where we are, to respond with kindness and courage during this massive outpouring of refugees from war-torn Syria. (And they, of course, aren't the only refugees in the world who are suffering....)
Art credit: "A Syrian refugee boy eats bread in the Western Bekaa village of Jub Jennin [Lebanon]," photograph by Niamh Fleming-Farrell /The Daily Star(03/14/2013).
All these years later we still have refugees, people fleeing war and famine and environmental disaster, fire and earthquake and flood. Thank you for the compassion you brought to the selection of these poems. They ring true through the years.
ReplyDeleteThis poem beautifully captures the quiet, shared sorrow of displacement. It speaks to the deep longing for home and the silent connection that can form between strangers, united by their pain and resilience.
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