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• 1 2025-05-16T15:14:17-04:00 "Refugee Blues" by W. H. Auden, contributed by Ahmad Abo Fakher (2025) 2 plain 2025-05-16T15:15:29-04:00 Refugee Blues
  By W. H. Auden
  
  Say this city has ten million souls,
  Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
  Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.
  
  Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
  Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
  We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
  
  In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
  Every spring it blossoms anew:
  Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.
  
  The consul banged the table and said,
  "If you've got no passport you're officially dead":
  But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
  
  Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
  Asked me politely to return next year:
  But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?
  
  Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
  "If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":
  He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.
  
  Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
  It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":
  O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.
  
  Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
  Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
  But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.
  
  Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
  Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
  Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
  
  Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
  They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
  They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.
  
  Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
  A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
  Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.
  
  Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
  Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
  Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.
  
  
  
  Written in 1939, the poem captures the experience of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany—people who were stateless, unwanted, and left without safe harbor. It’s a quiet, haunting reflection on exile and the loss not only of home, but of identity, belonging, and human dignity. This poem speaks to me on a deeply personal level. My great-grandmother was a German Jew who was killed in the Holocaust. Her story has always shaped how I understand the concepts of loss, displacement, and generational trauma. I’ve also grown up witnessing what it means to be a refugee in today’s world—my mother and brother are refugees living in the Netherlands. These experiences have shown me that exile isn’t always a moment—it’s often a state of being. Living as a refugee means carrying an invisible weight: navigating legal precarity, restricted movement, and prolonged separation from family. It means constantly existing in a space where belonging is conditional—where your presence in any country can be
  questioned, challenged, or revoked. The grief in Refugee Blues goes beyond losing a place—it’s the grief of being told there’s no place for you. Of living in the gap between symbolic gestures of welcome and the harsh reality of borders and bureaucracy. That line—“Yet there’s no place for us, my dear”—feels tragically timeless. By adding this poem to the Scalar site, I wanted to contribute to the broader conversation about grief and loss—not just in the personal sense, but as something tied to political exile, diaspora, and generational memory. It’s a reminder that some losses aren’t just about who we lose, but about where we’re no longer allowed to be.