Poetry Jukebox - This Place Meant...

The text from my Poetry JukeBox poem, This Place Meant... is below. I wrote it as a response to the unfolding horrors of the global refugee crisis.

This Place Meant…

We are described as a natural disaster:
A swarm.
A flood.
A river.
A tide.

We, who have inhaled our homes as dust,
And passed our babies with trembling hands,
Through razor wire in winter rain,
Because that is safer than what follows us.

We, who are borne bobbing like apples on uncaring swells,
Sometimes flailing,
Sometimes still.
Because what is behind us
Is unfathomable.

We, who wake with dew-pearls on our hair and eye lashes,
Beside train tracks that we follow on foot, ill-shod,
Slow as snails;
Our shells, the cold and ragged children on our backs.

There is no howl
That conveys what we have endured,
No utterance, in any tongue,
That explains what we have done.

Like wild water, have we chosen the path of least resistance?
Do we erode and tear and change what you are,
Where you live?
Are we a voracious insectoid mass that eats your crops,
And stings your skin?

Or, like you, are we people of the world,
With lives,
And dreams,
And jobs,
And kin?



©Adam Trodd.