Friends and readers,
Can I share a poem with you? I wrote it last week, closely inspired by a poem by Esther Cohen titled "War," published in her Substack newsletter Overheard. Esther's opening lines, "I don't know how / to write about war" and her yearning for better outcomes opened in me a flood of feelings about the thousands of migrants fleeing their lands today in desperate hope of something better.
It's an overwhelming situation—for the people trying to leave broken nation-states and for all the countries involved.
Here is the poem:
Migration
/After Esther Cohen
I don't know how
to write about migration -
hundred thousands
determined raped
hungry beautiful
today in the middle
of an enormous
divide civil war
here in the US
a frightening time
the US a country
I sometimes think of
as my second husband
second country I truly loved
when I was young
and now
wanted to live in a place
that was wide open in a way
I didn't know I fell
in love with Americans -
Irish and feminists,
Germans even
Ashkenazi Jews with
curly hair
the golden and ginger skin of
American blacks
their hard-won passions
Latinos working gardens
restaurants
poets
nearly invisible
in conversation
we made compromises (such
a blessed word now)
possibilities of living
people trying in a hundred
thousand ways
- and for this the world
still hopes
I spoke with Judith Aucar, Deputy Director of El Centro Hispano, a couple of weeks ago. ECH serves the Hispanic population in Westchester County, New York. They've been in existence almost 50 years helping immigrants become self-sufficient. It's been trial and error and discovering best practices. What ECH continues to achieve is inspiring.
Be on the lookout for this story on the next installment of Soy/Somos, here on Breathing in Spanish.
Let me hear from you. Always, as you know, this is a conversation.
A lovely poem Marlena, about an important topic. Thank you.
Hi, I’ve been following you for awhile now and have read your book At the Narrow Waist of the World. There’s a book that came out in May Incident at San Miguel by AJ Sidransky and foreword by me, Miriam Bradman Abrahams, historical fiction about my family during the Cuban revolution. Two brothers on opposite sides ideologically and how the revolution caused a multitude of refugees and families separated for many decades and even today. My parents and I became refugees and immigrants to the USA in 1962. The hardships of leaving and beginning again are described well.