Two seasons and at least one ocean separate today’s guest poster, Yen-Fang Heng of Australia, from my summery poem-elf perch in northern Michigan, and yet we might as well be sitting side-by-side for how much the poem she selected belongs to every moment of my day. I do love that little birdie she drew.
Yen also posted “Home” by Somali-poet Warsan Shire on a community bulletin board. It’s a much-needed addition to the global conversation about “sheltering in place.” I’ve included an animated version of the poem.
Thank you, Yen, for your poem selections and thoughtful commentary.
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Spring (Again)
by Michael Ryan
The birds were louder this morning,
raucous, oblivious, tweeting their teensy bird-brains out.
It scared me, until I remembered it’s spring.
How do they know it? A stupid question.
Thank you, birdies. I had forgotten how promise feels.
Here is the poem I chose because it is short and sweet and because I could illustrate it with one of my drawings! I am afraid I do not know anything about Michael Ryan, I just came across his poem in one of the many poetry blogs, emails I subscribe to. I googled his name and found out that he is 74 years old and taught creative writing and literature in the University of California, Irvine. I love the words, how they are replete with the promise and the potential of spring and new beginnings. And I love how I could accompany it with one of my sketches. It is not spring where I am, but to me the words herald the spring ahead of us, when Covid-19 is contained, and the promises that that brings.
Like everyone else in the world, we are in isolation, although there has been slight easing of the lockdown in Australia. I left this poem on the hedges in the park near where I live. Hopefully it will survive the weather for long enough so that various people will come across it and read it and enjoy the promises of spring.
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In these days of Covid-19, we are all being asked to stay home. Juxtaposed against this backdrop are the draconian policies against refugees and asylum seekers being perpetrated by the Australian government (the country of which I am a citizen) and by numerous governments in countries that are relatively well-off. For all those refugees, where is home? This poem, Home, by Warsan Shire is gut-wrenching but is a timely reminder of why refugees flee:
‘no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
I don’t know what I’ve become
but I know that anywhere
is safer than here’
Those of us who have homes to stay in, do we ever stop to think about what is it like not to have a home to go to? Not to have a home to shelter in?
I wanted to post this on a community noticeboard near where I live. I don’t really have an ‘inspired’ place to leave the poem, but I figured that at least on the noticeboard, it is sheltered (there’s that word again) and away from rain, and hopefully may last for a little while, so that as many people as possible will get to read these incredibly moving, incredibly realistic words. Warsan is a Kenyan-born Somali poet, writer and educator based in London. However, when I copied the poem onto a piece of paper, it was too long! I realised then how much goes into the choice of a poem.
Home
by Warsan Shire
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child’s body in pieces.
I want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hungry
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying
leave,
run away from me now
I don’t know what I’ve become
but I know that anywhere
is safer than here
Sorry, I am a she, not a he!
________________________________
Yen, I am so sorry! I will correct immediately. I googled your first name and I couldn’t determine the gender. I shouldn’t have assumed and I apologize.
This is one heck of a poem. It really got under my skin. It felt in reading it like I was living it. Thank you so much.