Poem by Stephen Cachia.
Image: Léonard Combier, “Passport Drawings”
I, man without a name,
have a passport of many colours.
When I travel they put me in a cell to ask me where I am from.
I am from the land of a million stars,
from an unknown island in the ancient sea of dreams.
At night, I hear the stateless waves lashing on the rocks,
I watch Vega cruising across the Milky Way,
I envision the Holy Virgin on a ship,
consoling poor convicts and chained slaves on their last journey,
escaped prisoners and so many damned Crusoes,
so many black and forgotten Ulysses
yearning for a sign under the stars.
There were no papers then.
Only dirt, hunger and pain,
only the thousand colours of the sky.
So hold my hand, dear brother, and don’t let me drown
for the ancient sea of dreams has become a grave.
I have a passport of many colours:
red as the blood of the pomegranate’s seeds,
orange as the Scirocco’s scorching breath,
yellow like the Sahara’s dust,
white as the bones abandoned on the dunes of the Fezzan,
green like the glow of St.Elmo’s fire,
blue as the eyes of Osiris in the storm,
purple like the Punk Moon’s dyed hair
as he makes love under the stars.
I have a passport of many colours,
as many as the galaxies in their lawless ramble across the heavens.
For as the prophet without a name once said:
we are all born free under the stars.
21st March is a World Poetry Day, declared by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999. Its purpose is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world and, as the original UNESCO declaration says, to “give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements”.
