The Office
When a child, she became interpreter
for her exiled Polish grandmother.
They would go together
to the Melbourne office
for passports and visas -
renewal time, or some such.
The office teemed with lives in crisis -
would Australia oblige? Those were days when
they spoke of displaced persons, ‘reffos’,
New Australians. Looking round, you saw
happiness dawn, refusals shatter. All
smiled on the child helping grandmother.
Decades later, down St Kilda Road,
she seeks a visa to return to Seattle -
to resume her studies long-dreamed-of.
A fortified outpost of the U.S.
keeps her back. Then: ‘your papers
are not in order. Go away, start again.’
Hers is hardly urgency they can notice:
her dog fell ill (she’d left him cared for
by a person who knows him.) Her return,
delayed by an oversight, puts study
in peril - as if the official cares!
In grandmother’s time, was it different?
Countries are countries, all must have rules.
Foreigners are feared, borders policed.
She’s no migrant herself, looking for where
minds can meet and ideas flourish, though
her dog-minder now sends word of gunfire,
a man on her street fallen, CPR failing.
Wednesday 27 July 2016
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