There Be Pain In Exile Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

There be pain in exile, even
if voluntary.


Yet as in all in the mass universe
A percentage of joy
however minimal.


And I scented the air, and that was
the gift, the only gift
I willed to make for myself.


and I scanned the air, for those
were my friends


And I beheld the Dawn to the last
till her disappearing
for that was my new breath


And warmed my hands in the rays of
the rising sun


the exile emarginated be content with
part of the whole!


even an ever-increasing smallness,
fraction, does!


and in exile there was freedom that I
made by escaping chains


though I suffer as the Jews suffered in
Babylon


yet beneath the stroke of the ferule
and the spattering of blood drops
and the pain and the groans
and the shouts
I have come in to my exile, grown and
yet to grow in it!