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| Evaleen Stein |
This poem was sent to us by Wendell
Smith who says:
“The mystery
brought this poem to my attention through Dr. Michael Sperber, an 86
year old practicing psychiatrist who has a poetry salon on Thursday
evenings in Beverly. It was anonymously deposited in a shoe outside
his apartment door. Evaleen Stein was a 19th
and early 20th
century poet best known for her children’s writings. But, while the
poet is not contemporary and its diction archaic, the poem’s
empathy for the plight of exiles is a contemporary need, given the
way we are treating emigrants, refugees, DACA children, and the
homeless. What are the homeless but exiles in their homeland? Where
is the Department of Homeland Security that will look to their need?
The poem is taken from One Way To the Woods,
published by Copeland & Day, Boston in 1897”.
The Exiles
Bare blackened boughs
That seem to press
Low skies,
storm-swept and pitiless,
Must be the only
roofs to house
Or shelter their
distress.
They tread by night
Beneath the
trees ;
Before them desert
distances,
Whereon the endless
snows are white,
And endless tempests
freeze.
Their eyes are
bound.
And iron bands
Are heavy on their
helpless hands
Ordained to delve
the barren ground
Of bleak,
unlovely lands.
Week after week.
Across the snow
And weary wastes,
they wander so;
No human heart
wherein to seek
Surcease of any woe.
Forevermore
Their footsteps wend
Afar from hearth,
and home, and friend;
Nor know they what
grief hath in store
Before the bitter
end.
Whate’er their
deeds.
It matters not;
Their very names
shall be forgot;
Their agony, their
heartsick needs,
And their forsaken
lot.
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