Syria. Halfway across the globe but not out of sight.
In my
lounge room, on my breakfast table: Syria, Sarin, send in the bombs.
Whose
children are those carpeting the ground? A mosaic of sadness.
The sounds of
Syria today: screams, silence, prayers .. in Arabic.. but other tongues
yesterday.
A litany of laments the national anthem for ages, since Adam walked
Eden, perhaps under the same sun.
Syria, the very navel of mother Earth, fought over like the
prize of the harem.
Land between rivers, stained red with more blood than both
arteries can carry.
What babble have the rocks there heard.. in Assyrian,
Kurdish, French, Latin, Aramaic?
A land older than its name, newsboy catch-cry,
spread over the war-table and stuck with pins.
Sorry.
The world wants another
spectacle.
My prayer,
as Russian fingers march the map to meet American
fists,
as guerrillas mark off territory sweating the name of Allah or of Mammon;
is for a second bolt of light to strike those eyes considering the roads to
Damascus.
