An Undoing World-The Klezmatics
Posted here today for the Syrian refugees.
By the time we're done with dancing
Elsewhere darling you'll be glancing
And the night's a river-torrent tearing us apart
Merely melody entwined us
Easily the ties that bind us
Break in fibrillations of the heart
Don't cry out or cling in terror
Darling that's a fatal error
Clinging to a somebody you thought you knew was yours
Dispossession by attrition is a permanent condition
That the wretched modern world endures
You drift away, you're carried by a stream
Refugee a wanderer you roam;
You lose your way, so it will come to seem:
No Place in Particular is home
You glance away, your house has disappeared
The sweater you've been knitting has unpurled
You live adrift, and everything you feared
Comes to you in this undoing world
Copper-plated, nailed together, buffeted by ocean weather
Stands the Queen of Exiles and our mother she may be
Hollow-breasted broken-hearted watching for her dear departed
For her children cast upon the sea
At her back the great idyllic land of justice
For exilic peoples ponders making justice private property
Darling never dream another woman might
Have been your mother
Someday you may be a refugee
A refugee, who's running from the wars
Hiding from the fire-bombs they've hurled;
Eternally a stranger out-of-doors
Desperate in this undoing world
Mother for your derelicted
Children from your womb evicted
Grant us shelter harbor solace safety
Let us in!
Let us tell you where we traveled
How our hopes our lives unraveled
How unwelcome everywhere we've been
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