No place for us

W.H. Auden's poem 'Refugee Blues' was written in 1939, about German Jews who had fled their homeland. The speaker talks to his companion, 'my dear'.

There are ten million people in the city: some live in mansions, some in holes. Yet there is no place for the two of them.

They once had a country. It is still there on the map, but they cannot go back to it.

In the village churchyard, an old yew tree blossoms anew every spring. But old passports cannot be renewed.

The consul bangs the table and says that without a passport, they are officially dead. But they are still alive.

Each stanza ends with a short, repeated line, a refrain, as in a blues song, the slow, sad music born from the suffering of African Americans. The poem is a lament for people the world will not take in.