A poem, by Li-Young Lee

Self Help for Refugees
If your name suggests a country where bells might have been used for entertainment
or to announce the entrances and exits of the seasonsor the birthdays of gods and demons,
it’s probably best to dress in plain clothes when you arrive in the United States, and try not to talk too loud.
If you happen to have watched armed men beat and drag your father out the front door of your house and into the back of an idling truck
before your mother jerked you from the threshold and buried your face in her skirt folds, try not to judge your mother too harshly.
Don’t ask her what she thought she was doing turning a child’s eyes away from history and toward that place all human aching starts.
And if you meet someone in your adopted country, and think you see in the other’s face an open sky, some promise of a new beginning, it probably means you’re standing too far.
* *
Or if you think you read in the other, as in a book whose first and last pages are missing, the story of your own birthplace, a country twice erased, once by fire, once by forgetfulness, it probably means you’re standing too close.
In any case, try not to let another carry the burden of your own nostalgia or hope.
And if you’re one of those whose left side of the face doesn’t match the right, it might be a clue
looking the other way was a habit your predecessors found useful for survival. Don’t lament not being beautiful.
Get used to seeing while not seeing. Get busy remembering while forgetting. Dying to live while not wanting to go on.
Very likely, your ancestors decorated their bells of every shape and size with elaborate calendars and diagrams of distance star systems, but with no maps for scattered descendants.
* *
And I bet you can’t say what language your father spoke when he shouted to your mother from the back of the truck, "Let the boy see!"
Maybe it wasn’t the language you used at home. Maybe it was a forbidden language. Or maybe there was too much screaming and weeping and the noise of guns in the streets.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is this: The kingdom of heaven is good. But heaven on earth is better.
Thinking is good. But living is better.
Alone in your favorite chair with a book you enjoy is fine. But spooning is even better.
*You can listen to this yourself by the author himself, here