Refugees

We are a graceless bunch, squeezed together on the narrow road south. What else can we do but run away, leaving behind more cargo then we can take? Even so, the road south is littered with abandoned possessions. How will we begin a new life? By the time we reach our new home in whatever village takes us in, we will be naked, stripped of possessions and... hope... and vigor. The last thing we will carry into our new life is God's mercy. Is it the hard haul over this muddy road that keeps us silent, or is it shame? Behind us, our enemy advances with the slow certainty of victory. Our soldiers abandoned their weapons and their dead on the field of defeat. Weapons and corpses sink into the mud. Two of the retreating soldiers, one of them grievously wounded, help me pull my cart, carrying my wife and three children. The rest is just cargo. The soldiers and I exchanged names, then set to work pulling and grunting. Just ahead of us the road slopes downward to the river valley. There our new neighbors will ferry us to their neutral country. We pause while my wife helps the wounded soldier. The other soldier, his arms akimbo, looks fixedly backward toward defeat and death. The sun is shining brightly back there. (This poem was inspired by Ingmar Bergman's 1968 film SHAME, about the plight of refugees during a war they cannot comprehend.)