Refugee Man

POSTED IN contemporary poetry August 15, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

Refugee Man

In the camps only the rats are fat yet always hungry
splashing on beady feet through the gutters

from place to place, weaselling through the holes
where the wind blows in its silent breaths, looking for water

the wind and the rat, light-fingered thieves of
those bits we have hoarded and waited for

Up among the legs of a woman, in caches of fur and bread crumbs
They crawl in their secrets, chewing holes in another language through plastic bags?
Stuffed in dark places

I teach my son somewhere new and we find
tiny marks of teeth and the smell of wind breath, sour from the salt, on bags left collapsed
of any life they might have had

And so he learns
And so he will keep on with his stones in the air and one day

he’ll become a million pieces of flesh falling through the sky
singing red in Jerusalem

 

 

Susan Wolff