PoemRefugee Blues
Author / PoetW H Auden
TagsDisplacement, Exile, Refugees, Statelessness

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that.

The consul banged the table and said,
“If you’ve got no passport you’re officially dead”:
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
“If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread”:
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, “They must die”:
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

W H Auden
W H Auden
21 Feb 1907 - 29 Sep 1973
Region: British, Northern Europe
Period: Contemporary, Modernist
Movement: Modernism
Awards: National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

more poems by W H Auden

Poem NameTopic
Another TimeEphemeral, Eternity, Fugitive
This Lunar BeautyIllusion, Love
O What Is That SoundConflict, Fear, Military Invasion
LullabyBeauty, Faithfulness, Love
Lady Weeping at the CrossroadsJourney, Love, Sacrifice
I Have No Gun,But I Can SpitBoundary, Isolation, Personal Space
Funeral BluesDespair, Elegy, Loss
45 Mercy StreetBeacon, Dream, Lost
In Praise Of LimestoneEternal, Myth, Reality

all poems by W H Auden

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