The Immigrant's Lament

It is a very selfish trait
To want to emigrate,
To a country free from stress
With a greater chance of success.

To improve one's lot is the aim,
Surely that is free of shame.
More space for less money; that's a draw
And a better life style; that's for sure.

The old pioneering days may have gone
But by some aren't totally forgotten.
With tools for building and farming
And to slavishly work; some find alarming.

To form a close relationship with the land,
By sweat of brow and callused hand;
To create wealth from productive work
And to be humble; to some is a quirk.

Millet's peasants without fuss,
In silence stand for the Angelus.
Though bereft of wealth and poorly shod
Are one with the earth and God.

No tales of woe in their eyes
And only thankfulness in their cries.
Formal qualifications, they have none,
But tickets to paradise they have won.

Speculators dream of wealth to come
And can acquire a tidy sum.
By use of hype and illusion
And amid much confusion.

Red necks are not welcome here,
We don't want a nation to live in fear.
Let the honest man go free
And give the jailers the power to see.

Measure by word and deed
If the individual is to be freed.
Those in ragged clothes and forlorn
Await the New Age's dawn.

How would Saint Peter at Heaven's gate
Judge those wishing to emigrate.
Heaven's excluded by those tainted
And by the materialists feted.

Is a country truly free
If it is blind to those who flee;
From countries torn apart by fear
And separated from those so dear?

It is truly a selfish trait
To ignore those wishing to migrate.
And it is an enormous task
To see the soul through the mask.

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