Who will remember them?

Joy Johnson's latest moving poem on refugees risking all to cross the seas to safety 

Reading time: 2 min

On sea beds

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.

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