Poetry Corner: Immigration

POETRY CORNER

– 1/25/17

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

Immigration has been an issue personally meaningful to all of us, and currently central to political discussion and concerns. No one could express it better than one of our poets today, Belinda Broughton. She says: “We are all migrants or decedents of migrants. Aside from the basic necessity to protect people, immigration enriches our cultures with food, music, ideas, art, and different forms of beauty. All children are born innocent. All people deserve a life worth living. Basically there are only two emotions: love and fear. Let us cultivate love.”

~ Kathabela

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Boat people (Photo – Ervin Janek).

Belinda Broughton

Seeking Sanctuary

I was only eighteen when Australia
opened its wide and friendly arms
to me and I made a home here.
My heart wells with this
red black white yellow earth.
My blood flows with it.
After fifty years even my bones
are made of it, belong to it,
will be buried within it.
I’ve walked this earth of Australia
minding my own business,
employing people, paying my taxes,
and everyone accepted me
despite my accent.
So it came as a shock recently
when I answered the phone to hear,
‘You still around, Wog?
Your time is up.’
The hard hot embers of hatred
have been fanned by politicians
like dogs snarling around a bone.
Ordinary people have lost their hearts
so Others, like I was, lost people,
who are running from storms
of bullets and cruelty
are incarcerated, frustrated
and treated like dirt.
And all that they are looking for
is safety. They are looking for refuge.
They are refugees.

​​Belinda Broughton is a visual artist and poet living in The Adelaide Hills, South Australia: “This poem (from my book: Sparrow Poems of a refugee) is in the voice of my husband Ervin Janek who ran from Hungary after the 1956 revolution. Like most immigrants who I know here in Australia, he lived a successful life, employed people, was self sufficient, and grateful for this necessary second chance. It is the same the world over. People who are driven from their homelands are also driven to make the best of their new situations, and, although they very often feel isolated at first, they usually become exceptional citizens of their adoptive countries.”

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(Photo – Natalia Rudychev).

Natalia Rudychev

cherry roots
reach the heart
of its new motherland
to cover the sky
with blossoms

Natalia Rudychev lives in New York City.

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> Photos by Ervin Janek and Natalia Rudychev.

♣ We welcome and encourage your response especially in the form of short poems. You may reply by leaving a comment below.