On Refuge and Language

On Refuge and Language

Suheir Hammad

 I do not wish  To place words in living mouths  Or bury the dead dishonorably  I am not deaf to cries escaping shelters  That citizens are not refugees Refugees are not Americans  I will not use language  One way or another  To accommodate my comfort  I will not look away  All I know is this  No peoples ever choose to claim status of dispossessed  No peoples want pity above compassion  No enslaved peoples ever called themselves slaves  What do we pledge allegiance to?  A government that leaves its old  To die of thirst surrounded by water  Is a foreign government  People who are streaming  Illiterate into paperwork  Have long ago been abandoned  I think of coded language  And all that words carry on their backs  I think of how it is always the poor  Who are tagged and boxed with labels  Not of their own choosing  I think of my grandparents  And how some called them refugees  Others called them non-existent  They called themselves landless  Which means homeless  Before the hurricane  No tents were prepared for the fleeing  Because Americans do not live in tents  Tents are for Haiti for Bosnia for Rwanda  Refugees are the rest of the world  Those left to defend their human decency  Against conditions the rich keep their animals from  Those who have too many children  Those who always have open hands and empty bellies  Those whose numbers are massive  Those who seek refuge  From nature’s currents and man’s resources  Those who are forgotten in the mean times  Those who remember  Ahmad from Guinea makes my falafel sandwich and says  So this is your country  Yes Amadou this my country  And these my people  Evacuated as if criminal  Rescued by neighbors  Shot by soldiers  Adamant they belong  The rest of the world can now see  What I have seen  Do not look away  The rest of the world lives here too  In America