This is where they come from:

villages eaten up by sand

river beds run dry

lands of red earth stained with blood

where there are mobs, bombs, bullets,

crops that fail.

 

This is who they are:

the young, the desperate, the brave,

fathers with daughters, motherless sons,

whose sin was to be born poor

worship the wrong body

bow before the wrong god.

 

This is what they carry:

hope, crumpled dollars, memories of home,

slips of paper with the number of a phone

for an uncle in Milan, a cousin

swallowed in the cities of the north

who has work, who sends back pittances 

and letters rare as desert rain.

 

This is where they place their fate:

in the hands of men with guns and easy smiles

who speak only the cold esperanto of money

who wait, patient and sure

promises tumbling from the wet caves of their mouths

smooth and soft as water.

 

This is where they lie:

washed up in their scores

on the shores of Lampedusa

their souls slipping the leash

back to Africa

their dreams and their names 

known only to the sea.