We Refugees

Key words:

• immigrant - a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country

• migrant - a person who moves from one place to another, especially in order to find work or better living conditions

• refugee - the state of being safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger or difficulty

Context

• The author was expelled from school at 13

• turned down the OBE (Order of the British Empire) because he was against the empire and colonialism

Poem

I come from a musical place

Where they shoot me for my song

And my brother has been tortured

By my brother in my land.

I come from a beautiful place

Where they hate my shade of skin

They don’t like the way I pray

And they ban free poetry.

I come from a beautiful place

Where girls cannot go to school

There you are told what to believe

And even young boys must grow beards.

I come from a great old forest← back when his country was untouched by colonialism

I think it is now a field ←his country is now taken over by the empire and resources taken away

And the people I once knew

Are not there now.

We can all be refugees

Nobody is safe,

All it takes is a mad leader

Or no rain to bring forth food,

We can all be refugees

We can all be told to go,

We can be hated by someone

For being someone.

I come from a beautiful place

Where the valley floods each year

And each year the hurricane tells us

That we must keep moving on.

I come from an ancient place

All my family were born there

And I would like to go there

But I really want to live.

I come from a sunny, sandy place

Where tourists go to darken skin

And dealers like to sell guns there← violence

I just can’t tell you what’s the price. ← not literal price, more so the price of taking people’s lives

I am told I have no country now

I am told I am a lie

I am told that modern history books

May forget my name.

We can all be refugees

Sometimes it only takes a day,

Sometimes it only takes a handshake

Or a paper that is signed.

We all came from refugees

Nobody simply just appeared,

Nobody’s here without a struggle,

And why should we live in fear

Of the weather or the troubles?

We all came here from somewhere.

use of anophora