Children in Exile, by James Fenton

“What I am is not important, whether I live or die--

It is the same for me, the same for you.

What we do is important. This is what I have learnt.

It is not what we are but what we do,”

Says a child in exile, one of a family

Once happy in its size. Now there are four

Students of calamity, graduates of famine,

Those whom geography condemns to war,

Who have settled here perforce in a strange country,

Who are not even certain where they are.

They have learnt much. There is much more to learn.

Each heart bears a diploma like a scar--

A red seal, always hot, always solid,

Stamped with the figure of an overseer,

A lethal boy who has learnt to despatch with a mattock,

Who rules a village with sharp leaves and fear.

. . .

Oh let us not be condemned for what we are.

It is enough to account for what we do.

Save us from the judge who says: You are your father’s son,

One of your father’s crimes--your crime is you.

Excerpted from “Children in Exile, Poems 1968-1984” by James Fenton (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 120 pp., $12). Copyright 1997 Reprinted by permission.