I am a facebook friend of Pussy Riot. They rock. In every way. What enormous courage to stand up to an ultra-rightwing thug like Putin. Anyway, someone wrote a piece on their facebook page about ‘open borders’. I liked the rhythm and have broken it down, restructured the text, to see if it works as a form of poetry. I reckon it does. The words and message are passionate and no-nonsense. And on the rigth side of history. That’s Pussy Riot!

****

“Don’t let them into our country!”

Why is it YOURS, though?
Some office handed you a piece of paper,
so you believe,
all innocently,
that it’s yours?
By birthright,
or bloodright, maybe?
Blood and soil?
Are you serious?
Isn’t it terrifying trying to justify yourself that way?

“Lucky me, too bad for you,”
you tell the Syrian girl
who crossed
five
national
borders
to end up in your country.

“Ha! You’re such a loser,
and I’m fucking awesome!”

That Syrian girl
crawled up
and over
a barbed-wire fence
on the Hungarian border.
She fell and broke her arm.
She got up,
but the Hungarian cops
grabbed her.
They sent her to court,
and under a new law
passed by Putin’s little buddy
Orban,
she could get up to three years in jail
for crossing the border.

“Tough luck,
but I’ve got blood and soil,”
you tell her.

Should people have the right
to choose where they’re going to live?
Some office tells you,
“Look at all those illegals swarming in!”
But can a person ever actually be
illegal?

(translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega)