Third Coast Festival -- Radio features

Came across Third Coast Festival. Highly recommend this amazing package of award-winning radio features.

This feature really grabbed me.

Here's an excerpt, a poem written by a Dutchman whose self-appointed task it has become to provide dignity to those who have passed on without anyone in attendance, poor or, surprisingly, even the rich.

Goodbye stranger


Goodbye stranger.

I say “goodbye” on the road to nowhere to the final country where everyone is welcomed in. Where nothing needn’t know your origin.

Farewell, sir, without papers, without identity, what were you looking for?

How much did you lose along the way?

Who stares through the empty window, waits, nameless man? Wait, while I speak and empty my empty words into this empty room.

I am too late. You, I never knew. Not in your weakness, not in your strength, not in the final country where you are greeted without name.

I don’t know the words you spoke, not to me. Who, then, loved you? In which rooms did you sleep? Who kissed you good night, who wear out your shirt?

Who will want to stand where you once stood? Who now takes the roads you took? Who still looks for you? Who remembers whence you came?

Who heard the voice calling out for you to come on home, man, to your final haven, Amsterdam?