A farmer from El Salvador
a miner from the Congo
a student from Syria
a mother from Mexico
a vendor from Haiti
a weaver from Ecuador
a musician from Mali
a child from Colombia
stagger to a border
where the only order is state-sanctioned terror
or climb into a boat
where hope is the only thing that floats.
They leave
families, memories, connection, love
passed down through generations,
language, songs, poems, wisdom
passed down through centuries.
Refugees don’t need pity, sympathy,
notoriety or eternity.
They need a place to live
with safety, with dignity
denied to them
by the countries they flee
and the countries where they are dying to be.
There is far too much blindness
to the crimes of a system
that destroys lands and livelihoods, tosses
human beings away like abandoned tools,
a system colder than the icy mountain passes
millions of refugees pass through.
We in the empires responsible
will we let all this continue
sated by the spoils of profiteering
into acquiescence or approval?
So go the refugees,
so goes the future of us all,
the soul, if there is to be any
of humanity.