Asylum

Officer, scrutinise

my papers and date of birth

with half-truths and unkind eyes.

Pinpoint if you can

where this life began

where it weaved into earth

and casually out again

honestly in precise

circumstances and coordinates.

You’ll soon understand dates

and stamps on a watermarked page

leave the bulk untold

whichever may be the language

used to slice lives open

behind bullet-proof, cubby-holed

existence across the ocean.

The papers tell a third,

and a quarter resides

in pot-bellied stereotypes

of breeding and birth

in the loose ends of clichés

that drown you in their drifts.

Your judgment hits and misses

my several lives and trips -

how will you fathom the words?

the depth of my betel-stained tongues,

that once spoke Hebrew and Arabic,

the songs they hummed and sung -

ancient lullabies in Farsi

and marching melodies in Hausa,

climbed whole mountains in Prakrit

washed in sacred streams of Babylon,

wrote love letters in Egypt

in choreographed hieroglyphs

and staccato flocks of cuneiform

under the arches of Hattusa;

wept lilting tears of Latin

at the final fall of Rome.

How exactly will you fathom?

the yearnings of a pilgrim

and those of wounded warriors

engaged far from home?

where would you grant me asylum

in the arms of which language?

and which ruby-lipped metaphor

will you use for your refusal?

You will never find out for sure

where I am coming from.