(Our) HISTORY (is Theirs), (Their) STORY (is Ours). For all refugees and those who seek asylum
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.
2
There is this thin surgical line
between North and South.
i tiptoe its intense unbalancing
at night
when the oligarchs and their
soldiers sleep and i am alone
in this godless catastrophe
called peace and war
and exile…
3
There is, also, a thin
armed line
between sanity and its sister
where a defeated people have
congregated like ants
in a crowd
aching for the next holocaust
4
for soon we will live
in a century
where they will suspend
all poets and preachers
from street-lights and the
television of crucifixions
like heretics once lit
with a bonfire of books.
5
Already i can hear the
whispering of the applause
while we watch helpless
as they burn our brothers and sisters
in these profane explosions
– their biblical and strategic
obscenities.
6
But between you and me, Lover
there is no thin blue line any more.
Now, there are only dreams of distance.
Your arms held out to this deep Diaspora
for the embrace of Light.
Left and Right now no more than directions in flight.
7
Every where i turn the people flee in boats.
They are crossing these imaginary lines
in our shipwrecked minds
destined now to death
by water.
We drown along-with-them in
newspapers and on screens filled
with the me-and-mine of our illusions,
a rhetoric of despair, the embrace
of sea or land or ocean no longer
even a destination.
Dead or alive, unwanted,
they are written
on the wind
as migrant or refugee,
both nameless and nonentity.
8
There are few beings who will survive
our western philanthropy.
Our own lungs can no longer breathe
with the cost of its crudity.
Its common-sense, its petty profit.
The poverty of our philosophies and lies.
Our greedy geography.
9
This is a story we will never dare tell
our grandchildren:
It has been sickening for 10,000 years.
In all this time a monstrosity
of madmen
have planted so many walls
the sailors’ maps became corpses
with staring eyes.
Our many directions subverted.
They have blurred all our beliefs
with borders and boundaries.
10
But see, all around you
as you slept, Neighbour
our world has now become
such an endlessness of
feet walking,
walking in search of safety
and a place called home.
Not a nation nor a tribe.
Not another lousy lesson by
a cruel schoolmaster
called history!
Not (yet) even: Humanity,
our Hurt, our Unfinished Story.
séamas carraher
15, september – 2 october 2024
*****
Reference – Video
“Inside the Protests” – Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE explores the growing protest in the country against refugees and asylum seekers, their manipulation by an ideology of hatred and exclusion, along with the Government’s inability to build relationships with local communities.
RTE Investigates – September 2024
IMAGE (“fair-use”)
The flight of Kurds from Afrin, NE.Syria (Rojava) following invasion by NATO member, Turkey and its armed Islamist militias
NOTES
Poets hanged: UN News 2022
UN rights experts condemn protestor’s execution,
Burnt Brothers & Sisters: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
We drown along-with-them…
A dead child washed up on Turkish beach lays bare Europe’s migrant crisis
On a beach north of Marzamemi, Sicily commemorating the drowning of 16 migrants from Egypt and Palestine on the 27th October 2007
whispering of applause– Israeli citizen support for genocide? November 2023
“Poll results were also hawkish when it came to the use of force in Gaza:
57.5% of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza,
36.6% said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower,
while just 1.8% said they believed the IDF was using too much fire power,
while 4.2% said they weren’t sure whether it was using too much or too little firepower. “
Our greedy geography.
UN report finds Israeli occupation of Palestine ‘indistinguishable from settler colonialism’
A United Nations report finds that Israeli occupation of Palestine is ‘indistinguishable from settler colonialism.’ The report also finds that the Israeli occupation is illegal and unlawful under international law.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe says that Israel is a settler colonial project which may be coming to an end. He warns that settler colonial projects reaching their last phase become more “brutal and ruthless”.
Middle East Eye – December 2023
“such an endlessness of
feet walking,”
UNHCR – Refugee Statistics (See Graphic, June 2024)
- 3 MILLION Forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2023 as a result of persecution, conflict,
violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order.
- 3 MILLION
are internally displaced people
- 6 MILLION
are refugees
- 9 MILLION
are asylum-seekers
- 8 MILLION
are other people in need of international protection
Other Images
Refugees – between 1939 and 1940
Louis Guglielmi – Refugees – 43.99 – Detroit Institute of Arts.jpg
Related Articles
Israel must drop charges against Palestinian human rights lawyer released on bail
Palestinian human rights lawyer Anas Bargouthi was released on bail today. © Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association “
EU urged to combat homophobic violence
An activist touches a rainbow flag during the fourth Sofia Pride annual parade in Sofia © REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov “
Iran: women on the frontline of the fight for rights
Iran: women on the frontline of the fight for rights From the mother sentenced to death by stoning to the
