Sand, Water and Blood

To the sea, my friends, to the sea.

Bring your boats and your rafts, for this one will not be parted before us.

Behind us are our homes,

    Which we loved in their poverty.

Behind us are the guns and the shellings:

    The death rattles and spastic flares that chased sleep from our bones

    And put the bones of our friends to their eternal rest.

Behind us are the sands and the rocks

    That sucked up our blood and made us grow up.

Behind us are our brothers and sisters,

    Both above and below.

We ride ahead.

We ride on the wave; displaced by the native stone that exploded into our oaisis.

    We ride ahead.

Ahead, to freedom that comes pre-packaged in a can.

Ahead, to the prospect of drowning in burning brine.

Ahead, to a place where they will hear us speak

    And give a second glance,

    Looking for a strange land in the stranger.

What will we tell them?

What words will roll from our tongues "broken", fractured and foreign?

We will tell them: 

    That it is not like what they see on television.

    That it is not like what they read in their newspapers.

    And that it is not like what they see in the fuzzy glimpses

        That fly by on their computer screens.

We will tell them that it is not one day, or a few days,

    But every day and every night

That brings dead sons and dead daughters to beaches

    Sodden with saline

And to deaf, dumb, overflowing Sicilian graveyards

    Seeded with the young and watered with the tears of the aged.

Moses, Yeshua and Mohammed are thrashing in their sleep

    Under a sky fitful and ill.

Can no-one let them rest?