We can all be refugees
Nobody is safe,
All it takes is a mad leader
Or no rain to bring forth food,
We can all be refugees
We can all be told to go,
We can be hated by someone
For being someone.
From “We Refugees” by Benjamin Zephaniah, who died this week. This man, this poet, this thinker, this activist, was brilliant, passionate, and saw us all as the same. He struck a chord with me often over the years.
When people ask me where I am from, I answer “It’s complicated” as I often sound like an Englishman, I am indeed (now) a Londoner, but my deeper sense of belonging is shared between Cayman, Scotland, and the Isle of Lewis. “It is complicated” too by a sense of kinship with people I have got to know from all around the world, from many different countries, religions, and backgrounds, by cultures, by ways of being that I love and respect that goes beyond the countries I am “from” and have lived in. As those of Jamaica (the country of Zephaniah’s roots and a place of deep influence on him) would say, “One Love”. As John Lennon said, “Imagine there’s no countries”. For me “it isn’t hard to do”.
Benjamin Zephaniah, you will be missed, and your legacy lives on. One Love.