A Somali family decided to flee
seeing their child’s hand destroyed
by a bomb he was playing with.
A family from Sierra Leone
decided to flee because their child
saw someone’s hand chopped off.
Teachers here tell how new children
won’t stop hiding under desks
in case there are more bombs.
One refugee told me that he too
once complained about too many
new faces in his country, Iran
but now he has no choice.
It’s either almost certain death
or surviving hatred the best he can.
At a café run by volunteers in London
refugees from Afghanistan
work hard selling coffee and cake.
They’re threatened with removal
to other parts of the UK,
their children just settled in school.
So, refugees seek refuge not only
from the current threat of death
but also, from the realisation
that the lives they built up
saving five per cent each month
are gone and they have to begin
again, stumbling in a new language,
the vagaries of a new government,
their old status smashed by war.
This composition is published as part of our Refugee: Poems of Courage collection, presented in collaboration with Poems Not Bombs, part of the Forest Poets collective.
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