A Refugee Poem

By Rituranjan Gogoi

Everything goes away somewhere, a name homesickness memory

What we loved changes with the seasons; A country we dreamed of, Of people searching for belongingness, A child ruminating on the colours of skin, Of wars that bleed the same blood; Everything comes back somewhere...

I ask you -

''What's more strange: remembering or forgetting'' The wounds of the land, The distances travelled, relations lost; Stories of history unfold in rusted pain, And, becoming strangers in a foreign land, Nights and days inheriting the same grief,

Seeding differences lonely refugees Crying human... Like monarch butterflies flying into a storm, Hope falls swift as raindrops, There's no going back, And, we tell our children - 'the world's changing,' The stress, the regard of generations, Falling like moths to a fire, ‘‘Where do we plant our tree of songs? When do we celebrate our freedom?’’

By Rituranjan Gogoi