Large blue mouths
Try swallowing the boat
As it lingers on the edge of its doom.
Its sturdy, humble timbers
Offer a bare, harsh refuge
As it rides precariously on the wave.
The Empathy Poems project is designed to raise awareness about the plight of asylum seekers and refugees.
Large blue mouths
Try swallowing the boat
As it lingers on the edge of its doom.
Its sturdy, humble timbers
Offer a bare, harsh refuge
As it rides precariously on the wave.
Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We’ll toil with hearts and hands
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands.
For those who come across the sea
Do you think we really care?
I see his blood, my father’s blood
on the stones, on my clothes.
My mother’s tears fall endlessly
not enough
to wash away his blood.
What a piece of work is man!
How bereft of reason,
how empty of all empathy.
In parliamentary motions,
how self-serving and despicable.
In action, how like a demon.
In comprehension, how like a clod.
A man came to my shoreline
In a rusty boat, and I in border uniform,
To seek shelter there.
On the choppy grey waves of the roughened sea
I came in patrol with my guns
And must wait, must stand and wait, while he struggled on to the deck before me.
To see a world in detention sand
And heaven in an excised flower
To hold a visa in your hand
And eternity in a Tampa hour.
I took my child to the water’s edge.
We walked the firm sand, foam
caressing our ankles. We watched
the surfers reading the waves, chest
and shoulders leading the curl
of the ocean, sunlight spearing
off the surface of the water.
She feels the loss on me again, beneath
this bright clear sky, I have brought winter though
here to her. My eyes full of the safe hope
that all the hard way here, through the long years
I hear the voices at the station
In the pub on Friday nights
Heard them on the bus this morning
Again, at noon, at traffic lights.
There is boy, the whispers tell me
He is begging for a home
He asks for bread, a drink, so thirsty
We answer with a stone.
Like a princess in a palace
Like a whale within a zoo
Like a beetle in a bottle
Like a room without a view.
Like a rat that isn’t leaving
With the sinking of a ship
Like the thrashings of a swimmer
Who is caught inside a rip.
Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies up from the shore
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was early, and the children were bruised from inside their skin, and we
kept them secluded, washed over in our arms.
Now we like to spend our summers free
down by, not under the silvery sea.
But when your name is Ali or Shareef
and your town is torn down
You save your money all year around.
Then away you go to a place you do not know, lost to be found.
You may rewrite this history
And say we never died
You might recite fake memoirs
But our tears will not dry
When I was one, the war began
When I was two, mother was new
When I was three, we were at sea
When I was four we hid under the floor
On Bodrum Beach my body lies
Washed ashore, amid the cries,
Of strangers strolling by; and in the sky,
As seagulls squawk and sound alarm
A policeman takes me in his arms.
Softly and humbly to the Edge of Europe
The convoys of dead Syrians come;
At night they sway and wander in the waters far under,
But morning rolls them in the foam.
The Law is my shepherd,
I shall but wait.
He maketh me lie down
in green pre-fabs;
He leadeth me beside
still Wardens.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of homes ravaged by war and wear
and tear and tears; cavities where doors
once yawned, unhinged neighbourhoods
whose streets once bright with laughter
were fortified by alley cats, tobacconists
and clutches of gossiping women threaded
together by small children at play.
I can tell by the way the palms beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried tent
that a storm is coming to Manus,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without an old friend,
I can't love without my dead sister.
The governments nor rebels will not hold.
Townships will not hold. Memory will not hold.
The house you grew up in; its eaves; its attic will not hold.
The Temple of Bel, the Lion of al-Lat and the Ajakbach will not hold.
The pomegranates – the رمان – in the bowl will not hold.