Migrant poesi, grænselandets sprog

Poesi fra grænselandet

Asylum


Will you please observe through the wire
I am sewing my feet together
They have walked about as far
as they ever need to go.


Will you further observe
through the wire
I am sewing my heart together
It is now so full of
the ashes of my days
it will not hold any more.


Through the wire
one last time
please observe
I am sewing my lips together
that which you are denying us
we should never have
had to ask for.


Mehmet al Assad 2002 (http://www.refugeeaction.org/rac/poem.htm)



My name is asylum


The centre is multicultural
But it has only one culture inside
The detention culture


(Angel Boujbiha 2002) http://www.refugeeaction.org/rac/poem.htm



Blues for woomera II


Let me dig my own grave
If it helps ease the burden upon you
Let me dig thro this iron baked crust
Thro this land forged hard in your image.
Arid. Free from water and compassion.
It is back-breaking work, but
Let me dig my own grave
If it helps ease the burden upon you.


Allow me to hang myself with a noose
Made of your gentle razor wire that will slice and choke.
And I will save you the trouble of a
Trial or a hearing. I will save you
The inconvenience of building a gallows,
Or even the cost of my return fare, so
Allow me to hang myself with a noose
Made of your gentle razor wire that will slice and choke.


Permit me, if you will,
To fall into a pool of my own blood, at my child's feet.
I will slash my own skin and sever my veins
Causing my blood to pump and splash to the floor
Where it will mingle with the dust of this arid place
There will be no blood on your hands, so
Permit me, if you will,
To fall into a pool of my own blood, at my child's feet.


Let me dig my own grave
If it helps ease the burden upon you
Let me dig thro this iron baked crust
Thro this land forged hard in your image.
Arid. Free from water and compassion.
It is back-breaking work, but
Let me dig my own grave
If it helps ease the burden upon you.


Nick Allen, July 2002 http://www.refugeeaction.org/rac/poem.htm



Refugee


(…)


Nobody here understands my language, so
I speak the tongue of compromise.
The grateful grammar
of being alive.

This is my certainty, my identity.

People ask me, where is home?
I say
home is where the heart is.


(…)

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, http://www.thenewblackmagazine.com/view.aspx?index=1453



"Refugee Ship"


Lorna Dee Cervantes



Like wet cornstarch, I slide

past my grandmother's eyes. Bible

at her side, she removes her glasses.

The pudding thickens.

Mama raised me without language.

I'm orphaned from my Spanish name.

The words are foreign, stumbling

on my tongue. I see in the mirror

my reflection: bronzed skin, black hair.

I feel I am a captive

aboard the refugee ship.

The ship that will never dock.

El barco que nunca atraca.





(Uden titel)


Me not no Oxford don

Me a simple immigrant

From Clapham common

I didn’t graduate

I immigrate

[…..]

I don’t need no axe

To split/up yu syntax

I don’t need no hammer

To mash/up yu grammar

[…..]

Dem accuse me of assault

On de Oxford dictionary/

Imagine a concise peaceful man like me/

Dem want me serve time

For inciting rhyme in riot

[….]

I making de Queen’s English accessory/to my offence

(John Agard in The New British Poetry, 1968-88, ed. Gilian Allnutt, London Palladin, 1988, 5-6)