Poem of Immigration & Exile - II

In a room full of exiles moth-like melancholy smiles, Janus- faced guests swapping worn nostalgia recipes tapestries woven always out of two histories, two landscapes. How many times have we stolen the sudden border between immigration and exile— our suitcase of stubborn loyalty and loss loosely tied with the twine of gratitude, the passport of anonymity in our wallet— to enlist as mercenaries in the petty daily skirmishes with foreign idiom, foreign seasons, foreign loneliness; then retreat into old memories, old mother tongue, attempting to conceal our allegiance to a Foreign Prince. Somewhere along the way we have traded the hooded cloak of illusions for the gray habit of compromise. Now we walk through life dressed in that sad uniform— still wandering under the crumbling shadows of vaulted arcades, along shores of distant blue seas— itinerant translators between tragedy and melodrama, cutting such strange figures; guests here, anywhere... There are longings that cannot be spoken, defeated defeat, dreams’ resurrection and ashes that only exiles know. (For Adam Zagajewski)