Sanctuary — a verse play

    John Kinsella

This anti-war, pro-refugee verse play is for anyone to use without permission. I have added a sound file read by Tim, Tracy and John here.

Sanctuary: for three players

 

 

Displaced Person 1

 

We must hurry,

they will close

the last crossing

at midnight.

Hurry!

 

 

Displaced Person 2

 

Why are they shutting people out?

Why are they abandoning us?

I cannot move faster.

I am tired. My legs

won’t work properly.

 

 

Person Right at Home

 

How much more do you expect

us to give? Our homes are our

castles

fortresses

sanctuaries.

We are responsible

for them. We are acting

responsibly. We must

protect our way of life,

as you of all people

should understand.

I took magnificent photos

of the northern lights —

close enough to touch,

bandwidths of the soul.

 

 

Displaced Person 2

 

You set numbers and if we

fall outside the quota

we are to be left nowhere?

You throw up fences

of false economies,

talk about gift horses

and who is eligible

and who is not.

 

 

Person Right at Home

 

Everyone is somewhere.

Even when you’re dead

you’re somewhere.

We are also people of faith.

Your somewhere

doesn’t have to be here.

I have always been

a weather watcher.

I pay for carbon credits

when I travel.

 

 

Displaced Person 1

 

We will not get through.

It is too close to midnight

and the shortest distance

isn’t a straight line.

 

 

Displaced Person 2

 

I am hearing they’re already

turning our people away.

And there’s talk of those

who have managed to cross over

being evicted as soon as the law

for their protection can be altered.

It’s happening as fast as an attack.

The roads have been blocked.

Trains cancelled. Flights

reserved for those with visas.

They promise instead to send

more weapons, more uniforms.

 

 

Displaced Person 1

 

Or they say we use weapons

against their weapons

which cancels us out.

We have not lifted

the weapons sent by anyone.

We are trying to leave the war zone,

our homes. Under the rubble

they remain our homes,

but they are uninhabitable.

The idea of home needs to stretch

to accommodate us, let us find peace.

 

 

Displaced Person 2

 

We left skies full of drones and missiles.

We left ground and buildings torn open.

We left a rising sea of blood. We left

under the gaze of the media: entertainment.

We left as witnesses who won’t be heard.

 

 

Person Right at Home

 

It’s complex, isn’t it. These overlapping

underlying interactive criss-crossing decussating

issues... the balance of life the means of production

the quality of life the scales of justice the contexts

of history. It’s complex. But a full house is a full house.

We ask for your understanding. All that ice

melting into the ocean. All those non-sequiturs.

We offer you weapons or we demand you do not

pick up weapons. We send food parcels or we starve

you if you do not comply. We are counter-indicative.

Stay at home. Stay where you are. Keep your footing.

 

 

Displaced Person 1

 

A literacy of loss.

A literacy of avoidance.

A literacy of evasion.

A literacy of production.

A literacy of accumulation.

A declaration of fatigue,

of weariness with ‘plights’,

of the diction of ‘bathos’.

A loss of balance. Vertigo.

And if we can’t speak,

we can only be silent,

irrelevant? Homeless.

Occupants of somewhere.

Nowhere. Fluctuations

in the atmosphere.