Written piece
Refugee
Tshiamiso Makole
Botswana
About this piece
This poem reflects on displacement, and its erasure of common places. Generations later, children of the Refugees do not carry the viscosity of their origins. They cannot sometimes, even reclaim their asylum countries as their own.
The mountains have pounded
my memory.
These rivers have thawed
my identity.
Bees sound
like bombs.
Gongs send me seizures.
I, convoluted and diluted,
have fogged into lostness.
Nothing here smells like home
this side of the river Nile
and we will go on
and on
and on
till home is extinguished.