We will decide who comes here …

We will decide who comes here,

Who crosses our golden shore.

We will decide who comes here … we said

And from our fair southland,

Our words went forth,

And in a far aged white continent,

Our words were heard.

Our words weren’t done yet.

After long years,

The echoes return,

Return from faraway.

We will decide who comes here …

From “Mare Nostrum” the echo returns.

Our waves – Our sea.

We in possessive.

Did you know,

That we can paint

Lines above the waves

And build from them a wall?

And are the children still flung overboard?

Red meat for that loyal hound which still

Waits, waits for the bloody whistle

Ears pricked, maw salivating.

We will decide who comes here …

We will decide who can board

and fly first, or business

or in those crammed seats for the less privileged.

But you, you will cross deserts and brave sea storms.

You may be the best of us.

But you will pay robbers.

And after they’ve robbed you .

If you are lucky,

We will parade you before our people,

And with your bones cement our power.

… You see

… the heaving pustulent masses at our door

Action must be taken …

We must break and exit .

And perhaps you are right.

For who can countenance

The waves of death crashing,

crashing endlessly,

On the far spreading shores of our indifference.

We will decide who comes here …

Are we clear who we are?

Not brown, not black, not poor.

We will decide who comes here …

It was an admirable deceit,

When we promised, by solemn treaty no less,

To end every form of racism,

Yes, every one, and drive it from this Earth

But it was too late.

For race was our measuring rod you see,

No matter,

That its carelessly scrawled divisions make no sense,

And that the bloody incisions,

With which we dissected mankind,

Still bleed.

It wasn’t easy, mind,

Scoring those lines,

Again and again,

In the backs of the people,

Across arms and legs and torsos,

Male or female, child or grown, it mattered not.

But once scored those chasms are never to be crossed.

Not by the poor …

We will decide who comes here …

Not racism we said –

When we unstitched our racism

From the words of the treaty,

And hid the racial measuring rod behind our backs,

Smiling in satisfied virtue,

Smiling, for we would decide.

Green is our favourite colour

And if that is your shade,

You may enter, whenever you wish.

No wave tossed dinghy for you.

We will decide who comes here …

We will decide …

When the last coal plant closes

And the cost, never mind,

Haven’t we magicked solutions before?

No doubt our machines will solve all

And if your island sinks beneath waves,

Perhaps your body too will crash on our shores,

We will decide, after all.

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Edited image by Sandra Seitamaa on Unsplash