THE EMIGRÉE

• "There once was a country...I left it as a child"
• "but my memory of it is sunlight-clear"
• "It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants"
• "but I am branded by an impression of sunlight"
• "white / graceful / glow / clearer / shining" - semantic field of peace and purity
• "as time rolls it tanks" - military imagery
• "That child's vocabulary I carried here like a hollow doll"
• "I have no passport, there's no way back at all"
• "They accuse me of being dark in their free city"
• "My city hides behind me." - caesura adds sense of finality