America's Promise....Of Mercy...The Joke Poem by James B. Earley

....Here we are....full circle
Where once stood Merkel's
....Ancestors....a reflection...of when
Tragedy's invasion of a nation....
America witnessing conflagration
....Yet denying the Jews way back then

Despite.....her nobility
.....Our Statue Of Liberty
In whose hands burns the beacon of hope
The trust in the morrow....
Yesterday's....curtain of sorrow
Found that promise of mercy a joke

Ignoring Germany's atrocities
Allowing Hitler's curiosities...
Giving rise to the sordid the craven
...Lives......of degradation
An entire population.....
America denied....the Jew....safe haven
*
*
Having fled social disorders
Thus breeching our borders
....Dreamers...through no fault of their own
Now stranded in limbo
Nowhere to go
...America....the only home...they've known

......Despite her nobility
The Statue Of Liberty....
In whose hands burns the beacon of hope
That trust in the morrow...
.....Today's curtains of horror
America's promise of mercy...the joke


Author's note:
"In a long tradition of 'persecuting the refugee, ' the U S State Department and FDR claimed that the Jewish immigrants could threaten national security. June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust."
~Daniel A Gross - SMITHSONIAN.COM