[Camino Poem No. 10] Home

This is the 10th of 42 posts about the poems that I brought with me as I walked the Camino de Santiago trail across Spain. 

Over the first ten days of walking, I had been feeling a lot of fear. It peaked on this day. Ostensibly, it was about the rising levels of pain in my knees, ankles and hips - would I do myself serious injury? would i be forced to stop walking?

But under that, if i was willing to look, there were deeper questions - will I ever finish my PhD? can i find a career that is both financially sustainable and meaningful to me? where do I belong?

I put this poem in because I wanted to remind myself. Remind myself that, as hard as a 500 mile walk could be, my journey was voluntary, relatively comfortable, and ended with a return home. Millions of people have been making much longer journeys - not voluntarily, not comfortably, and not with a foreseeable return home.
Maybe I also wanted to ask - what was I running from?

As I read it (beside a lake, with a wonderful math teacher from Georgia, USA) I couldn't take it in.

and now?

Day 10 – Home – Warsan Shire (1988-)

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats

the boy you went to school with

who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory

is holding a gun bigger than his body

you only leave home

when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you

fire under feet

hot blood in your belly

it’s not something you ever thought of doing

until the blade burnt threats into

your neck

and even then you carried the anthem under

your breath

only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets

sobbing as each mouthful of paper

made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

no one burns their palms

under trains

beneath carriages

no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck

feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled

means something more than journey.

no one crawls under fences

no one wants to be beaten

pitied

no one chooses refugee camps

or strip searches where your

body is left aching

or prison,

because prison is safer

than a city of fire

and one prison guard

in the night

is better than a truckload

of men who look like your father

no one could take it

no one could stomach it

no one skin would be tough enough

the

go home blacks

refugees

dirty immigrants

asylum seekers

sucking our country dry

niggers with their hands out

they smell strange

savage

messed up their country and now they want

to mess ours up

how do the words

the dirty looks

roll off your backs

maybe because the blow is softer

than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender

than fourteen men between

your legs

or the insults are easier

to swallow

than rubble

than bone

than your child body

in pieces.

i want to go home,

but home is the mouth of a shark

home is the barrel of the gun

and no one would leave home

unless home chased you to the shore

unless home told you

to quicken your legs

leave your clothes behind

crawl through the desert

wade through the oceans

drown

save

be hunger

beg

forget pride

your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying-

leave,

run away from me now

i dont know what i’ve become

but i know that anywhere

is safer than here

(on this day, I walked 22km from Viana to Navarette)

p.s. is poetry a way of facilitating experiential understanding?