The Emigree

• "There once was a country ... I left it as a child

  but my memory of it is sunlight-clear"
• "The worst news I receive of it cannot break

  my original view, the bright, filled paperweight."
• "That child's vocabulary I carried here

  like a hollow doll..."
• "I have no passport, there's no way back at all

  but my city comes to me in its own white plane."
• "I comb its hair and love its shining eyes."
• "They accuse me of absence, they circle me.

  The accuse me of being dark in their free city."
• "My city hides behind me. They mutter death,

  and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight"