Refugees

International Publication Prize, The Atlanta Review

(This poem is one of a series of three poems which you can read in A Story of the World Before the Fence.)

The boat is too small for so many

and only the twin babies sleep,

drunk on milk and swaddled tight

rocking against their mother

as the men row hard into familiar waters

of the Gulf of Hormuz for the last time,

the starlight on the receding mountains

dimming fast until what is left

of this new moon night is the abiding

light from their holy fire, fed carefully

by their priest with sticks of sandalwood

pulled from deep in his white robes, as he looks east

into the black Arabian sea.

All the joy and blood that had come before already turning to myth,

he counts how many generations it takes to go

from conqueror to refugee.

The rest of the poem is available in: A Story of the World Before the Fence.