(Our) HISTORY (is Theirs)

(Their) STORY (is Ours)

for all refugees and those who seek asylum

Global Rights 

 

1

 

There is this thin line called

the corpus callosum.

It transects both the geography

and blind terror

of a displaced mind.

 

There is, also,  Citizen,

this imaginary place

called East and West.

 

Here your patience must wait

for a future condemned

to be force-fed

on the futile fear of the mindless,

mediated now between the meridians

of thought and thoughtlessness.

 

If you woke alone in

this no-man's-land

it would hiss hatred

at your presence

like an angry snake

disturbed by its own

selfish sleep.

 

Here

we must all seek rest

somewhere between memory

and trauma

and the strange yet familiar

sound of screeching voices,

where nothing spoken will ever

make much sense.

 

Somehow here, mein Führer,

all our words are taken

hostage.

 

Our Being, already mute with the

chatter of speechlessness,

is now made unbearable with

the lobotomy of borders... (contd.)

"Refugees" Morris Topchevsky (1939-1940)

 

FULL POEM (& Links) 

 

Louis Guglielmi - Refugees (1939)