Migrant

Stranger in your homeland and stranger
amongst strangers
month after month you labour and every day
is the same as yesterday.
But for you also there comes
the happiest of days
That in which you return home:
and once you are hom
the misunderstandings begin.
Your children have grown
of you all they know is your name
but your affection, your love is enough
to draw them all
to your heart
and the old tie is remade.
Your dreamed-of days
have vanished quickly
you go -- and the old round begins.
Your soul once again you leave here
and alone, with your bag
filled with memories you go:
This is your whole life consumed
between an arrival and a departure
and to think that you went
to stay for only a year or two.

From Balai, Asian Journal No. 12, as printed in A Moment to Choose: Risking to be with Uprooted Peoples, A Resource Book produced by the World Council of Churches, 1996.