See in my poems Immigrants
Continually Coming and Landing:²
They need not depart—
Give ye them to Eat.³
We clad strangers in the
Garb of our own People.⁴
The Stranger isn’t a threat—but
The promise of a Different Ending.⁵
I complete my Exile in your Handwriting.⁶
Only humans can be foreign:
The rest is Mixed Vegetation,
Subversive Moles, and Wind.⁷
Only Worldwide Solidarity can
Transcend modern Homelessness.⁸
These Strangers in a foreign world,
Protection asked of me—
Befriend them, lest yourself in Heaven
Be found a Refugee.⁹
Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp—
Give me your tired Poor, your huddled
Masses yearning to Breath Free, the
Wretched Refuse of your teeming Shore.¹⁰
¹ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
² Walt Whitman, Starting from Paumanok
³ Matthew 14:16 (King James)
⁴ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
⁵ Joshua Bennett, America Will Be
⁶ Mahmoud Darwish tr. Akash & Forché, Mural
⁷ Wisława Szymborska tr. Barańczak & Cavanagh, Psalm
⁸ John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
⁹ Emily Dickinson, These Strangers
¹⁰ Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus