Poetic Devices

Symbols: The passport symbolizes the arbitrariness of human-made systems. Here, it grants its owners the status of personhood within society at large. This means that the speaker's lack of a passport robs them of their personhood. Though they are still alive, without a passport they are legally, though arbitrarily and illogically, considered dead. Meanwhile, the speaker reflects ruefully, passports do not simply renew themselves: unlike trees, they aren't subject to the cycles of nature. In this sense, the passport also signifies the unnatural and arbitrary strictures that humans force one another to obey.

Metaphor: Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky; It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die": O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Alliteration: Refugee Blues

"Walked through a wood" uses alliterative "W" sounds.

"Thought I heard thunder rumbling" uses both alliterative "Th" sounds and assonant "U" sounds.