Misplaced Person Seeks Pomegranates

Gold cherry
Poem of the week

By Turlough

Thu, 09 Jul 2026
  • 226 reads
20 comments
 

 

Misplaced Person Seeks Pomegranates

 

Two-country boy caught in the wrong place

Fearsome fatherland, meagre motherland

Shallow-rooted, waved the wrong flag

Used the wrong tongues

To speak the wrong words

To greet the wrong friends, again and again

 

Orange bonfires burning bright

As the Lambeg calls the tune

For the next episode of Bombay Street

Beware to those who speak their minds

We are the people, not you!

 

Black hoodies dancing to blacker noise

On pedestrianised broken glass

Sons of Mosley, darkest souls

Beware to those who speak their minds

Don’t like it here? Then go!

 

He’s home at last, hint taken

‘Dobre doshli’ on the mat

He’s a cuckoo in a garden

Where pomegranates grow

And in his land of milk and roses

The white immigrant is kin

 

 

Note:

Dobre doshli (Добре дошли) means ‘welcome’ in Bulgarian.

 

Image:

My own photograph of the flag of the Republic of Bulgaria.

 

 

Certificate 12
Poem
Poetry in Commotion
Opinion
Inspiration Point (work that responds to our weekly writing cue)
Autobiography

Comments

Submitted by insertponceyfre... on

That last stanza is particularly powerful. Nice IP response turlough. Was there ever a word quite so weaponised as migrant?

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Thank you very much.

You're right about that word migrant. I'm a migrant and so are the people on the boats fleeing war and famine. Skin pigmentation is the key feature that sets us apart. And then there are the migrants here who try to rub shoulders with me. They aren't migrants but 'expats', just waiting for E. M. Forster to come along and write a story about them.

Turlough

Submitted by GlosKat on

This is a beautiful way to express an ugly truth, Turlough. Woe betide those who don't fit into one camp or another.  For all our civilised ways, society hasn't moved much beyond the tribal.  I'm pleased you've found such a welcoming diverse community.

Loved 'pedestrianised broken glass' - a very powerful image.

To digress a little (as is my wont), but on the same subject, many years ago our village shop here in a  Wiltshire village was for sale.  An Indian family were interested in buying it. The owners were leant on not to sell.

I thought this was shocking when I heard about it.  In Southampton I lived near a corner shop run by an Indian family.  The whole family worked in it, even the kids after school. They were a lovely hard working, polite, friendly family, and the little kids were a delight - they called me 'Madam' very solemnly and respectfully which always made me smile.  They would have been a credit to our village.

People are so frightened by the unknown. If only our villagers had actually met an Indian family, there wouldn't have been so much prejudice based on ignorance. 

And I've learned a new word – Lambeg.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Exactly Kat!

If only our villagers had actually met an Indian family.

My elderly mother would never eat 'Paki food' when she came to our house so we'd tell her it was Malaysian and then she'd be fine with it. And then she got to know a Bangladeshi taxi driver who treated her with much more courtesy and respect than the English drivers she knew, so her attitude changed. In the couple of years before she died my sister and I would occasionally take her to an Indian restaurant near to where she lived, and she loved it.

In the hours after the sun has set on the 11th of July in the North of Ireland, for someone with a background similar to mine, there is no more terrifying word than Lambeg. The noise it made and the songs full of hatred that accompanied it will stay with me forever.

Turlough

Submitted by Turlough on

"War breaks out and nobody turns up..."

Turlough

Submitted by GlosKat on

If only. 

One of the things I find most scary is the children who are involved in the rioting and hatred and mindless bigotry. It happens on the 12th July where you come from, and it happened recently in Southampton where I come from after that debacle with the student stabbing.  You see the kids with their balaclavas throwing stone and bottles and setting cars on fire.  Many of them are subteenage. They can't possibly really understand what they're doing, or why, they're just joining in some tribal ritual.

What on earth can be done when they are indoctrinated with hate so young ?

On a brighter note, I'm glad to you managed to broaden your mother's cultural horizons, even if a little bit of being economical with the truth was required.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

I wish I knew the answer Kat, but I'm not sure there is one. 

It's something that's always gone on but it seems to have become significantly worse in the last ten years, stoked up by social media access to the hate speech of the likes of Farage, Robinson and Trump.

France meet Morocco in the World Cup tonight. No matter which side wins there will no doubt be trouble in French cities. Sofi (Priyatelkata) is worried for her mixed-race family who live in Paris and Toulouse. It'll be even worse if Marine Le Pen ends up running the place.

My mother's mother (English Electric Grace) hated the Irish and Catholics and went to great lengths to try to stop my parents getting married. After she met my da's family she was over in Ireland for holidays almost every year. With every race or religion, once we've got round the ignorance and the brainwashing, people can always get on. A glass of Power's and a faerie reel was all it took in her case. And isn't it just easier to be friends than to be enemies?

Turlough

Submitted by GlosKat on

I always found it strange at the height of the Troubles that we had different kinds of Christians literally attacking another.

We haven't moved on since the medieval period when the Crusades moved from the Middle East to Eastern Europe and started slaughtering whole populations for being the 'wrong' kind of Christians.  Then there's Simon de Montfort massacring the Cathars who had lived peacefully alongside their mainstream Christian neighbours.  When asked by his soldiers how they could tell the difference, infamously said 'Kill them all, God will know his own'.

So many people believing their version of god is the only right one and therefore everyone else must be wrong, even those within the same religion, eg Catholics/Protestants,  Sunni/Shia.  

 

Submitted by Turlough on

During the Troubles in Ireland there were indeed different brands of Christians fighting each other but they weren’t fighting over religion. The problems in the North always have been about the lack of civil rights of the Catholic / Nationalist community. That’s why Bernadette Devlin’s Civil Rights’ campaign had the slogan ‘One Man, One Vote’.

I’ve copied this bit from Wikipedia…

Before this campaign, the voting system in Northern Ireland local elections differed significantly from the rest of the United Kingdom. Only ratepayers (those who paid local taxes) could vote, which effectively disenfranchised many poorer, largely Catholic residents. Additionally, business owners and university graduates were allowed to cast multiple votes, which allowed the unionist minority to maintain control over councils in nationalist-majority areas.

And now it’s me writing again…

The discrimination was a disgrace. Business and industry were controlled largely by Unionist Protestants so it was difficult for Catholics to get jobs. There were barely any Catholics in the bigoted and corrupt Royal Ulster Constabulary. And when they decided to build the North of Ireland’s second university they put it in Coleraine, a small town in a predominantly Protestant Unionist area, instead of Derry, the second city which was, and still is, mostly inhabited by Catholic Nationalists and where there was a high rate of unemployment. This is just a sample of what went on and still goes on to a certain extent. And it’s for this reason that Nationalists believe the country should be reunited.

But it’s always gone on. Have a look on Google at The Irish Penal Laws.

After gaining independence in 1922 the leaders of the Irish Free State (which became the Irish Republic) had no idea how to run a country so they unofficially left it in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church who were almost as brutal as the British Government and its forces had been. Since the 1990s and the days of the Emerald Tiger economy, Irish people have learnt what it’s like to be prosperous and to live their own lives the way they want to do. Consequently religion has thankfully gone into rapid decline. However, the Farage types manage to keep the bigotry going. Have a look on the web at 12th July Unionist bonfires. They direct their hate at Muslims instead of Catholics these days.

My poem was about the North of Ireland and England, both of which were dangerous places for me to voice my political opinions. In Bulgaria nobody cares where I come from and I don’t really understand their politics, so we’re all grand. For the first time since I was ten years old I feel safe in the place where I live.

I could talk about this all night, or even write a book...

Turlough

Submitted by GlosKat on

Gosh Turlough I had no idea of all that, and me a Catholic in a convent in the 60s and 70s too.  Thank you for explaining it, I will go and look it up.  I'd read your book about it.

Re the bonfires, I did see today in the news about the Moygashel bonfire with the replica mosque on the top, and the notice 'END THE THREAT OF RADICAL ISLAM' like that's the only kind.  Anyone who's a Catholic or a Muslim must be terrified.

 

Submitted by drew_gummerson on

Congratulations. This is our Pick of the Day!

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Thank you Drew, that's marvellous news. It makes my emigration all the more worthwhile.

Turlough

Submitted by Di_Hard on

A lady on the news was saying how her boys were in the school football team, had lots of friends, she didn't want to move. So frightening for the place fled to for safety suddenly to turn against you. I liked your last stanza very much, too

 

Submitted by Turlough on

It saddens me to say there are awful stories like that happening all over the world.

Many thanks for your kind comment Di.

Turlough

Submitted by Jane Hyphen on

I agree regarding the final stanza it's punchy and poetic. Some people can turn so quickly, one way or another and catagorise everybody according to one experience. Surely one day soon, there will be no more catagories. I always forget that my partner is an immigrant and so does he sometimes.

My colleagues are Ukranian refugees and I'm getting regular horror stories from them, worse every day, as sickening as your imagination can go. It's almost as if conflicts have trends, some are more equal than others.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

There are horror stories coming at us in all directions Jane. Ukraine is a good example as the Ukrainian refugees that came to Bulgaria are generally different to the ones that went to Western Europe. Ours are the Russian speaking Ukrainians who have fled their country to escape the threats of violence and death from Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians. They don’t want to be part of Russia but they can’t help speaking the language. It’s all they have ever known.

A couple of years ago I was talking to a Ukrainian woman who worked on the check out at a supermarket in Lisdoonvarna, a small town in the West of Ireland. I always like to have a chat with people with East European accents. She said she and her family would feel safer back in Ukraine than they would in Bulgaria, which was something I had never considered. There’s almost a Ukrainian civil war going on beyond Ukraine’s borders.  

In the city near to where I live there’s a restaurant run by descendants of a Syrian family who came here as refugees during the Syrian civil war of 1922. They were accepted then and they’ve been happy ever since, apart from the bits about Bulgaria being on the wrong side in World War Two and the period of Communism that followed.

The whole world seems to be just one huge intolerant mess.

Thank you for reading. Sorry for overdoing it a bit with my reply.

Turlough

Submitted by airyfairy on

This is our wonderful Poem of the Week! Congratulations!

Submitted by Turlough on

I'm delighted to hear that AF. Thank you very much indeed!

Turlough

Submitted by celticman on

It saddens me to hear refugees used as bait for the baiting of evil, small-minded morons. Trump, Farage, Mosley, Hitler. A fag paper of difference between them. 

 

Submitted by Turlough on

It disgusts and infuriatnes me CM.

Turlough