Ideal of the Refugee - edit

[dukealien]

Ideal of the Refugee


What dreams call refugees to flee old homes
for hope of welcome in America?

Those yearning for fresh enclaves featuring
their own tribe with its language, and their chiefs
dispensing wealth Americans will grant
must be denied as no true refugees–
mere colonists who won’t assimilate
but circle closed minds under foreign flags.

Those driven by grim nightmares of contempt,
minorities by race and history
whom native lands revile and dispossess
may be admitted as true refugees,
become Americans, fit in, befriend,
revere its faith in full equality.

original version;

What makes a refugee
dream of emigrating to America?
Wretched conditions where he lives:
not its infrastructure’s crash
so much as government’s raw hate
of him, its lust for murder
and race-blame it foists
for its own failure.

What makes America
dream of welcoming a refugee?
One who, however much he owned
and was hated in his homeland,
can discard that cicatrice
and live in ordered comity–
not to colonize America
but be colonized by its ideals.

Such a one, with talent
and ambitious liberty to work
becomes a new star in the flag
he and all Americans may bring
as they launch new constellations
colonizing frontiers higher–
countless amities of light.

Inspired by critique/discussion of Color Enforcement a bit brighter and more individualized.  And not, I hope, too Kipling  for modern sensitivities.