Poems for World Refugee Day

34,361+ 

By Natasha Remoundou

 

The children dive 

from the Aegean’s pink rocks 

into the water.

One or two of them

- the best swimmers- 

with an amphibian dip 

emerge onto the surface

carrying in their gasps 

as many pebbles 

as they can salvage

from the uncertain direction of the ascent,

and strange pearls 

from the melanoid bellies of sea urchins 

they steal with their teeth 

to offer them to their sunburnt mothers.

With their amateur acrobatics

-and mostly with the thorns-

they could have driven them mad 

if they,

eclipsed behind sunglasses 

with distorted mirror lenses,

had not slumbered.

And just like this, 

and while the summer reverie 

and the games mainly

in a deliberate lethargy 

were plunging us, 

we lingered 

with a question under the sun:

that is, 

were the ruins on the sea bottom of their cacti palms

the most unusual objects we had ever seen,

or was it the beast 

that cried out foreign names and surnames

and with a paralyzed oar 

inscribed them on the concrete sand? 

 

 * The figure 34,361 refers to the number of documented deaths of refugees and migrants due to the restrictive policies of "fortress Europe" as documented by the United Nations as of 5 May, 2018. 

 

 

 

Apolis

By Natasha Remoundou 

 

 

I was told the country I’m looking for  

does not exist. 

they insisted I spell its name,  

I write it down in syllables, 

and looked at me like  

I had not two but three heads. 

they asked me to find it  

on the map, on the globe, on Google 

because no one had ever heard of it. 

 

With a formal complaint,  

they unanimously accused me: 

delusional 

fraud 

stranger. 

  

I was told mine was a futile pilgrimage  

on the orbit of a bare geography 

my world, an expired passport,  

my oyster, 

untranslatable my origins. 

 

Exiled in homecomings, 

I invent homelands  

deported to the Arcadia within me. 

 

 *published in Writing Home: The 'New Irish' Poets, Eds. Pat Boran & Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi. Dublin: Dedalus Press, 2019.

 

Snowballs 

By Amin Sharifi Isaloo

 

I thought about you when the fields were white with snow.

It was approaching the New Year and the little snowflakes silently danced in the heavens.

Lots of people celebrated together in a festive mood and everyone was trying to share the funny time with others. We did too.

You made me extremely happy and you gifted me with your friendship and love when you threw snowballs to me. 

We were all excited as we played with snowballs.

Unfortunately, the snow melted and the snowballs disappeared. 

Then, we began to throw stones and it was the first sign of the destruction of life.

Gradually, we progressed from stones and arrows to the testing of bombs.

We changed from silence and sharing to the noise of technology and aggression.

Everything changed and our feelings did, too.

The walls, fences and high-voltage wires along borders,

Men with guns standing in a row,

Separated us and the little children from their mothers.  

I am scared, you’re scared too.

My feeling is we don’t care about people anymore. We are all like “nobodies”, like a mass of humanity. Maybe it’s the last sign of life on the planet.  

But, maybe there’s a chance that things will change and happily we will play snowballs together again. I hope that that day will come.