Humanity - a poem for refugees by Joy Johnson

Packing up her school books
Laughing with her friend
It only took a moment
For her school days to come to an end

“We’re only kids in school”
Her voice was pained but clear
Bodies charred and disfigured
She was defiant in a time of fear

Sepia soldiers in the trenches
Skin blistered, bandaged eyes
Clinging to their comrades
In agony a generation dies

Winter froze the Arab Spring
Targeted for slaughter
Children no longer protected
Someone’s son, someone’s daughter

Pitiful souls crammed together
Clinging to flimsy protection
Abandoned to treacherous water
A flotilla of desperation

Over the Aegean Sea
T. shirts, trainers images haunt us
A testament to life’s fragility
Would be scientists, doctors, nurses

Hands reach out and clasped
Out of tyrants clutches free at last
But razor wire greets the huddled masses
And says No to the new colossus

 

Read Emma Lazarus’s famous poem which is engraved on the Statue of Liberty