Poetry of Issue #8 Page 63

We exiles are all
Specialists in packing
We know what to leave behind

We take with us
Suitcases that we can lift
We leave behind us
Connections & ways of life

We take with us
Birthdays, marriage anniversaries
The shelters of gestures & jokes
The words for bread & coffee

We know desperately well
Railway stations & airports
We anesthetize this Fate
By crosswords & mystery stories

Our luggage is
Anxiety & hope
To survive
To work

Wherever we come, languages shift
To the dismay of lexicographers
The orthography grows unreadable
We build new houses of words

We are carriers
Transported & deported
Thus metaphors
This wine our blood

The poetry of mulatto tomorrows
Will be in our languages
We carry it
Like cattle-cars cattle

The maximum diameter of the universe
Is 240 times 10 to the 24th kilometres
We had no need
For this calculation

It’s not so easy
Bridging Milky Ways
We are thirsty
Carrying goods over
London 14509

Darko R. Suvin