In your pocket
He was wearing a black jacket and sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers.
The young man’s face and hands
eaten by marine animals.
Before the autopsy was performed, Sicily noted,
That the drowning man’s shirt had a breast pocket sewn into it.
It contained a plastic bag, with black sand in it.
Perhaps from his home village? Refugees often take
such souvenirs with them when they move on.
Six months ago, the corpse of another young man found in a truck full of
pampers. It was sealed in Turkey, opened
at the Customs Office, Warsaw, Utrata Street.
Slipped inside just before the vehicle was sealed.
The driver did not know that among the pampers
he carried something else. It is not known when the passenger
in the truck turned into waste. Dry
has crossed so many borders and so many waters, wrapped in diapers.
Ewelina Li recently at a slam compared unrequited love
to a passportless refugee detained at a border crossing,
to a scorpion in amber, and to a hard stool. Voting for her poem I thought,
that it was incorrect. But maybe she was right? Perhaps she has heard of these
the corpse of a refugee found between packages of pampers?
The third would-be Pole would not even have had to take advantage of the forced
EU refugee distribution quotas, as the first one did, had he survived.
He reached the EU border himself. Pushed in the back by the barrel of a border guard,
He lost his balance, fell into the water, and when he was fished out he was already dead.
This time it was not Mediterranean water, but the Bug. They fished it out today.
I stand before you, me a Polish-speaking immigrant, even a Novopolak.
Polish is my fifth language. But it is also my language.
I don’t know if I escaped the war in my crumbling country, or if I just wanted
a better life. Should I be happy that Poland, that Europe, that it let me in,
that it didn’t reject me completely, that I am now one of you?
Or should I cry that people like me don’t want to let me in anymore?
I don’t own a stinger or a weapon…. except for a few kitchen knives.
I tell you, I don’t want to assault or kill or rape anyone. The three,
mentioned didn’t want it either. For sure. They dreamed of living.
And you know what else? I’ve been carrying some Warsaw soil in my pocket for several years.
