Sunday, 22 July 2012

Promised Land by Michael Rosen

A family arrived and said they had papers
To prove that his house was theirs.
— No, no, said the man, my people have always lived here,
My father, grandfather .... and look the garden,
My great-grandfather planted that.
— No, no, said the family, look at the documents.
There was a stack of them.
— Where do I start? said the man.
— No need to read the beginning, they said,
Turn to the page marked ‘Promised Land’.
— Are they legal? he said, who wrote them?
— God, they said, God wrote them, look,
Here come His tanks.

http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/poems.html