My passport, sir, you dare to ask,
It’s here and plain to see;
Where Gauja carves its signature,
Before it meets the sea.
My passport’s written on my face,
Reflects my nation, mirrors race,
And I will tell you, tell you so,
It goes wherever Letts will go.
Our fathers died, our mothers wept,
When passports were unknown;
Culture is our passport,
Our roots thread through the stone.
You needed not our passports,
When times were cruel and tough,
When rail cars took our folk away,
Our kind was good enough.
My passport none shall gift to me,
My birth right not to grant,
Bequeathed to me before you came,
That I shall not recant,
The land that was bestowed to me,
Held back the Rus and Baltic Sea,
What need for passport, paper proof,
Can I be else but else in truth?
Penned for émigrés in general but inspired by the haemorrhage of Latvians. They lost so many through Soviet deportations and their being obliged to flee their homeland. The Gauja is a great Latvian river.
Michael (Walsh) © 20.06.13
quite_write@yahoo.co.uk