My father – his own father
was a conscientious objector –
My grandfather laboured
under a slow faith – assured –
by the Peace Pledge Union –
he mumbled as a lector
when turning – digging – veg
in the later world war –
and then in my early life –
Both battled the last century
over their long-dead causes

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I stand at a window
in the heart of Beirut
counting bullet holes
in the wall opposite:
Fireworks overhead,
jarring the senses,
reviving my long-buried
childhood memories:
And what does the man,
fourteen floors below,
make of such explosions,
in his war’s afterglow?
I am here for a meeting,
in this luxury hotel,
for hedge fund managers
who will all go to hell.

1.
We looked down at our craft,
a rubber dinghy, rescue-orange,
not Charon’s promised ship,
but we are tied to it now,
to get us thirty-three kilometres,
to a safer place:

I had paid for a life jacket,
with my last fifty dollars,
the going price,
and strapped the aid
to my youngest’s body,
losing him in its bulk,
assuring him it’d be alright.

Salt on my lips burnt to remind me
that we faced poisonous channels,
that we do not swallow the water,
that we only taste the air:
God’s last breath.

And I looked him in the eye,
my eight year old child,
this century’s offspring,
not saying anything,
instead silently praying,
that we both survived.

2.
I fear flying, with him,
a ridiculous agony of what could be,
if we dropped from the sky,
but here we take to the water,
in a simpler, but, more dangerous craft.

I left my wife, his mother,
buried too deep to recover,
her headstone delivered
one night by Putin,
on orders, whatever they were:

I cannot speak Russian,
only Arabic, French and English,
being a Syrian, a descendant of Eblan,
the first world power,
before New World wars ever began.

3.
Our useless boat almost sank,
on its launch, but we bailed,
clung, held each other –
my legs went dead in the crush –
Under breath: God, please, if that could be
the only death tonight.

I woke to still-no-land,
in the damp sobbing, lit by the glow
of phones held up,
seeking signal distance;
my held child slept,
ignorant of the sleeplessness
I endured

as a parent, guardian, keeper,
watcher, life guard
who cannot swim.
Then the water joined us,
Achilles heel-first,
here, vulnerable to the sea.

This was our nose-dive,
and I held him, we descended:
He chilled in the tall waves’
lifts and drops,
spitting out coin-foul water,
bailing our throats with heaves:

I slipped under as that jacket
took him away, to the other side,
his limpness no more weight,
no buoyancy required
in the underworld,
a cold, cold death
for my warm-clime child,
and me.

Broken is my reaction:
A child, now a man,
lifts a child, both dusted,

carried, one barefooted
caught in sleep, or poverty?
He looks dead,

must his back be bared?
Or does his red shirt roll
over his hung head to mask his death?

But it could be a girl, either way,
carried from that blast,
where stairs hang

as if Escher had been
at work in Aleppo on another
Regular Division of the Plane.

Sandhurst – England – training world leaders –
subsidised captains of overseas terror

We pay state taxes to crush insurgents –
brutal regimes are this year’s perfect

Military managers of political dissent –
drilled in line – the loyal-regiments

Excuses – Regional security assured –
ruling-by-war under Sandhurst swords

We British have sold Saudi Arabia
a billion pounds worth of megalomania –

July to September – only last year –
Now no hard arguments for kings to fear

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