Here is a poem

for the others

who are born on mud floors

marshland and high plain

in homes of plastic and flattened tin

in spat-out estates in lands

whose time has gone

in the mewling sprawling cities 

of the south and east and rising world

who tumble down out of shanty towns

looking for work and hope and food

who doss down in shop doorways

on park benches in abandoned cars

who snatch sleep on night buses and on tubes

amid the echo of gunfire

who ride the long trains north in the night

running the gauntlet of gangs, police, La Migra

who slip across borders soft as water 

on blistered feet

and take their calloused hands 

to the sweatshop, the factory, the scramble

for work at the corner of the street

who live in fear of being 

denounced, detained, deported,

who will be trafficked, who will be sold

who will die before they are one year old

who will deal drugs in the barrio, the favela

who will get by, whatever

whose crops will fail

whose names will be known to no-one

but themselves and the hot dry wind

who dream, as we do

 

who are coming now, 

an unstoppable future.

 

 

© Steve Pottinger. 23 July 2013