Refugee Poem by Christine Natale

I look into your eyes and see
Another homeless refugee.
Our souls have wandered long and far
Past empty countries under bars;

In courseless ships adrift on sea
We sail for unmarked boundaries;
We ride the ghostly midnight trains
On tracks that double back again.

To leave behind the crumbled past,
The burned out shapes that could not last,
You fled and bore no other sack
But nightmares clinging to your back.

For these cannot be left behind -
They mark our footsteps as they wind
And call to us our fearsome fate
Which turns our fragile love to hate.

I too have left the world behind -
The ruined country of my mind.
My rags are shreds of blackbird wings
I bind my feet with broken strings

I walk with others, tired and weak
No longer knowing what we seek,
No longer seeing what we pass,
A filthy, hungry human mass.

Our eyes have met along the way
But nothing’s left for us to say,
No human warmth can waken whole
The frozen refuge of the soul.