Poem of the week: Sudanese Saying by Pierre Joris

Short, stinging lines convey the pain and injustice of the 2016 demolition of the Calais refugee ‘jungle’

Sudanese Saying

One of the non-
bourgeois of Calais
on one of the last days
of the Great Emptying
I.E. the Shameless Hiding
of the “eyesore”
Calais refugee camps
called “the jungle”
where “jungle” is a translation
of Pashto “dzhangal”
meaning “forest”,
one of these non-
bourgeois of Calais
reported
a Sudanese saying
to object to their,
the refugees’ dispersal,
a saying that says
solidarity
alleviates pain,
& this is how
It goes:
“if we die all together,
death is a feast.”

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