A poem about refugees you need to read

In the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks, a wave of anti-refugee sentiment crossed the Atlantic, with over half of U.S. governors declaring that they would bar Syrian refugees from settling in their states. Poet Jason Defo Fotso, then eighteen years old and a public policy undergraduate at Duke University, believed that these statements contradicted America’s long history of accepting refugees and, more symbolically, the sonnet inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Fotso sought to revive the welcoming spirit with a dual-perspective piece, one that would transform the very words of enmity into empathy.

“Refuge” by Jason Fotso

Refuse these refugees.

Too great a cost awaits if we

open

our homes and hearts

for all those displaced

children.

Close our doors on

desperate men.

Only

the ignorant play host to hatred.

Remaining oblivious puts us in the wrong

hands.

May we pay heed as they bleed into our

nation.

They indeed share the blood of our

enemy.

Our own

are endangered by

too

many

of those seeking entry.

We have forgotten

the promise

Lady Liberty casts light on.

In this darkest hour

terror

reigns victorious over

the people

of

power.

The

fear itself

conquers

the home of the brave.

(Read from the bottom up, pausing only at the spaces between stanzas.)