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The Migrant's Reply
We have been running for so long. We are tired. We want to rest.
We don't want
to wake up tomorrow and pack our bags. We have gone 10,000 miles.
We have
boarded a row boat, tug boat, bus, freight train. We have a cell phone
and some bread.
Our eyes are dry. Our breath needs washing. What next? You are
putting up
a wall on your Southern flank? What an irony. The country that
accepts refugees
does not want us. We qualify. We have scars and our host
governments hunted
at least some of us. The rest fled in fear. Gangs do not spare
even the children.
White vans took away our uncles, our cousins. Do you think they
have been made
into plowshares? Ay, what are you saying? Too easy. Too easy to
wear our hearts
in these words, in slings, on our faces, furrowed, perplexed.
What happened
in kindness to strangers? Why do we have to be herded like prisoners, held
in a holding camp? We are human beings and, like you, in safer countries,
we have the same obligation to save ourselves and our children.
Oh, the children.
Look at them. Give them food and school and a new set of clothes.
Give them
a chance. Whether you are red or blue the eye of the hurricane does not
discriminate. We are your tumbling weeds, hurling cars,
flooding banks. And
we are diggers of the dikes. We can teach you so many languages
and visions.
You would learn so much: you would never ever say lock us up.