Fortnightly Poem 2.B (Karen’s)
Looking for Home (from The Dialectics of Rain)
We’d heard of that country, heard of its hugeness
heard of the miles of empty
A sky full of light so bright it hurts
the earth red and flat and forever
The black dome of night seething with stars
its arcing black arms saying Welcome!
This whole vast space, and so few people
Plenty of room for lost souls…
They say they’re good people, everyone’s equal
Definitely no airs and graces
They laugh at their leaders, no military coups there!
They believe in fair go mate
looking out for the under-dog—that’s us!
They say She’ll be right, so we will!
Worth all those bullying blue months in the sea’s wild claws.
Worth leaving our loved ones, and home…
But they think we’re the people we run from
We’d disturb their comfortable lives
They famously fear the dark
Papa he’s old, could not be persuaded
I want the devil I know, and that space is all desert,
their hearts, their heads just as empty. And those thousands of stars
are the wrong ones, mocking the distance, the difference
They kick the under-dogs, chase them off
send them starving to Somewhere Else
I’d rather face bombs and prison here, than their detention
in the desert or on impoverished islands
They don’t want us there. There are car stickers which tell us
‘Fuck off we’re Full’
They think we’re the people we run from
We’d disturb their comfortable lives
They famously fear the dark
Papa he’s scared, he’s scared of change
but any change must be better, than screaming
of bombs, of children and men, skeletal buildings
and the constant fear of the midnight knock…
He sees only the worst, his fears defy reason—A huge rich land.
The Fair go land. Would they turn us away, fleeing death?
But they think we’re the people we run from
We’d disturb their comfortable lives
They famously fear the dark…