Francis Geyer’s “Refugee” first appeared in the Summer 1962 issue of Meajin, one of Australia's premier literary magazines. Geyer was Gwen Harwood’s second published heteronym, whose creation freed a multitude of Harwood’s most notable poetic strengths (read more about Harwood’s heteronyms here). Harwood styled Guyer as a European romantic, a Hungarian refugee who most likely migrated to Australia following the 1956 revolution, and afforded him a rich lyricism and sentimentality missing from the poetry Harwood was writing under her own name and that of Walter Lehmann, her other heteronym at the time.
Harwood’s heteronyms caused much embarrassment to editors across Australia. Meajin’s then editor, Clem Christesen, who was the inspiration behind Harwood’s famous poem ‘Abelard to Eloise’ (which reads acrostically “FUCK ALL EDITORS”) for his alleged plagiarism of one of Harwood’s lines, appears to have identified Geyer as one of Harwood’s heteronyms (see below) but printed the poem none the less. Sifting through Meajin’s digital archive, I was pleased to see Geyer still named as the poet of “Refugee.”
Refugee
I remember the rough-spoken landscape frayed
by years of upheaval, the towns
unimaginably old, and the thoughtful passion
of the Christ in a church where we prayed.
I remember locked figures in the streets:
duel or embrace, I did not know;
the impetuous gestures of our guide
as we came to those gates where the river meets
rock, the savage boldness of the flood.
A voice saying ‘Freedom’ in a tongue
I have forgotten, the wet red sandstone,
my life-long terror of blood.
I remember the ocean licking at lonely piers,
and the scavenged food. I cannot remember the faces
of father, mother, my sister; only the places
that were not home, and the tears.