You become a stranger in your own place
A stranger in foreign lands
They changed our names
And they look like boxes
So, you can have a permit to work
An uncle tells me
The old ones have to change
The names, above all
A thousand up and down in the piggybank
They called me Box
It didn’t bother me very much
I’m not going to stay there anyway
First job in Canada
Washing dishes, and lots of them
It took many loads of laundry
“To gather three thousand”
What kind of worker are you!
An uncle tells me
And I just keep scrubbing
So, the village won’t leave me
“Before I gather three thousand”
Not much time passed
I became a waiter
And instead of serving
There was an uproar
Three coffees in my hands
With a careful eye
I trip over my own feet
And onto the customer
Oh my God, Mike, I say
I’ll go back to the village
“When I gather three thousand”
When I sank
Into the routine of Canada
And drowned in evening tears
I thought of those I left behind
Those I loved so much
From the collection's own note: the images with these poems are AI-created artistic renderings by the source, not historical photographs.