It is Day 769 of the Daily Poems, and for most of us the dawning of the new year is an opportunity to make resolutions and look to the future; but for some the present is tragic and the future is bleak. There must be a humane solution to the refugee crisis … meanwhile our poet Fiona Clark takes us to a mean hotel bedroom near Ipswich, where a woman dreams of the colours and the spices of home.
A refugee dreams of the colours of home
She sits in the hotel bedroom, which she shares with other women,
the neutral walls, and beige swirls of the carpet tone
with the white-grey skies outside, the spatter of rain on the window,
which won’t open fully, only a small crack of air,
and the dull roar of traffic on the A14 near Ipswich.
Her wrinkled hands lie useless in her lap.
She was queen of the kitchen, knew exactly
how to blend the spices for each dish : Kuzbara, shamar,
filfil (black pepper, lots of this), girfa, habbahan, janzabeel
goronfol. Here, her busy, skilful hands are idle, only to unwrap
a plastic-packaged sandwich of pale processed cheese,
or to run a damp cloth round the shallow handbasin.
Her eyes settle on the one crude painting, red
and yellow, a graceless daub of sunflowers in a vase
but a single splash of colour, nonetheless. She squints her eyes,
half sees the corner of her kitchen, the open door lets in a wedge
of lemon-yellow sunlight, and through the door,
a glimpse of her garden, in a wealth of ochre earth
and glossy leaves. Spinach grows there, slender-fingered okra,
and strong greens, Sumaka Wiki, or ‘push along the week,’
a dish to eat until a feast day, when there will be meat.
She had always told her sorrows to her plants, her husband’s death,
the loss of one small son, at birth. Where shall she pour her cup
of sadness now? She tries not to see the rolling waves,
the indigo waters, where one head bobbed away,
hands held up briefly, pleading for their help. They looked on helpless,
their own hands lay useless in their laps. The drowning woman’s eyes
had held her own, for a few short seconds, before the ink-black sea
engulfed her, and colliding currents pushed along the weak.
Fiona Clark