Song for the Boy

Write to Life is a creative writing and performance group that supports our current and former clients to tell stories through art forms. It is the longest-running refugee-writing group in Britain, and the only one specifically for survivors of torture.  

A poem about grief, by Aso

The season of cracked pomegranate and wet sleet.
Under the rain, dry-beaked swallows carry snowflakes.
White husks fall beneath their wings as they sing
migrating to the island of immortality,
never returning,
making the mother weep
lonely dust over an empty chair.

Oh quiet world.
Her heart is taken,
what’s left are fears.
Her world destroyed,
she sinks in tears.

The roads are full of purple, parched petals
but the houses are black seaweed.
Late last autumn, when a boy left home,
heart beating fast
not a single leaf remained on the trees.
Eyes blinking, cold breath falling from chapped lips,
a boy migrated, taking a backpack of light on his shoulders
but leaving darkness in the yard.

Oh quiet world.
Her heart is taken,
what’s left are fears.
Her world destroyed,
she sinks in tears.

When he goes, the moon follows his steps, losing the sky path to morning.
When the sun rises, the moon remains,
stuck still inside some darkness of the night.
The boy has left.
The mother turns into a rootless tree
making shade for ladybirds in the flowerless garden,
black dandelions everywhere.

Oh quiet world.
Her heart is taken,
what’s left are fears.
Her world destroyed,
she sinks in tears.

The boy gone.
The mother still
waiting
afraid of the deathly sound of footsteps.
Silence has stopped her ears
separation has choked her.
The wind took every drop of dew to the ocean
but the candle still burns in her heart.

Oh quiet world.