REFUGEES
by W.D. Furley


You show me a countryside
empty except for bare trees
colorless apart from brown
and grey, I show you in return
the supple angles of the trees,
the way they creak and sway;

you show me a highway
leading into a blank distance
trodden in single infinite file
by refugees, I show you the miles
they have already come, the resistance
needed to become refugees

instead of unburied corpses.
You point to villages destroyed
and refugee camps already filled
to overflowing. I say men rebuild
the most soul-shattering void
if they only keep on going.





published in Outposts Vol. 160.