NO MAN'S COUNTRY Poem by Pedro Arturo Estrada

Blessed are those who lose all homeland
for theirs shall be the light of their own dominion.
But the homeland is no one's when anyone
must deny it three thousand times before strangers.

The homeland has been seized in airports,
banks, multinationals, as uselessly wrinkled as the
valueless banknote that displays it; the homeland slowly fades
in the put-away photograph - crumbles away
with the scent of the last coffee.

The homeland is gradually left lying
on the streets of all the other homelands
to which we one day fled.