Sunday, 22 March 2015

A song for Bekaa Valley (2015)




They were only babies.
Some of them young enough
To never have known
The outside world.

A place without
airstrikes and snipers.

Where a night's sleep
isn't broken by fear.

All innocence left behind
as they walked the road from Damascus.

A community of makeshift tents
offered a temporary reprieve.

The first sanctuary
their short lives had ever known.
Only they weren't safe.

Their presence unsettled the neighbours.

Mired by indifference,
beleaguered by war.
I faced the children of Syria

on Mothering Sunday.

But I saw no flowers.
Or chocolates.
Just unaddressed cards.
These were no longer babies.

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