Who will remember them?
Joy Johnson's latest moving poem on refugees risking all to cross the seas to safety
Reading time: 2 min
of the Aegean.
Of the Mediterranean.
Cemeteries for refugees
without tombstones.
Without eulogies.
Men, women and children
cast adrift
in dinghies that are unfit.
In life jackets
worthless and dangerous
for seas that are treacherous.
To Dunkirk in little boats
on a rescue mission
they became heroes and legends.
To the refrain,
we’ll meet again.
Don’t know where.
Don’t know when.
Their story. Their legacy.
Their place in revered history.
Despite stormy waters
brothers, sisters, mothers
and fathers desperate for asylum.
October 2020 families
flee lives unimaginable
to a land that is inhospitable.
Not a land far away
of which we know nothing. Today
a cemetery in the English Channel.
