Driven From Our Land

Driven From Our Land
© Surazeus
2022 12 18

Where shall we go now, driven from our land 
by lords in palaces with powdered wigs 
who transform our family farms into gardens 
with statues in mazes where shadow demons 
consume our souls in clanking factories 
while our children starve to death in the streets? 

I feel their fearful anguish in my bones 
hundreds of years after they fled the land 
where our ancestors lived thousands of years 
to escape the tyrant in the glass palace 
who confiscates their land with legal scams 
so they sail old boats to the Promised Land. 

For hundreds of years they migrated west 
to escape tyranny of kings in crowns 
but they invaded lands where people lived 
to build new paradise on bones of gods 
till they all died as their children grew up 
who forgot harsh traumas of yesteryear. 

Now all their ghosts are haunting me this hour, 
rich lords who drove my people from their homes, 
my people who sailed across sea of storms 
and traveled waste lands to find paradise, 
and the tribes whose lands my ancestors stole, 
all groaning for injustice of desire. 

I cannot change injustice of the past, 
nor atone for crimes my forebears committed, 
but I can dedicate my honest heart 
to treat every person I meet in life 
with generous respect for their equal rights 
as we struggle together to survive. 

Where shall they go now, driven from their land 
by hordes of soldiers with rifles in tanks 
sent by oligarch of their nation-state 
to acquire more lebensraum for their tribe 
by killing millions of innocent folk 
to build car factories on their stolen farms? 

Yet we humans are not trees that grow roots 
which anchor our bodies to fertile land 
for we can walk away on motor legs 
to journey far around this spinning globe, 
and then we die and our bodies dissolve 
to dust that forms foundation of the world. 

We journey nowhere, driven from our land 
by displaced refugees from distant wars, 
so every tribe that wanders on the Earth 
follows their prophet with vision of hope 
for whom they name the fertile land they steal 
till everyone forgets who lived her first.