Drowned.
All sparks extinguished.
Swallowed by brutal oceans.
Corpses by the shoreline.
A few of many.
They have names
andt the ache of hope abandoned
is borne by their coffin bearers.
We will weave our fictions,
cast the blame upon
vessels, rebels and smugglers,
upon dogmatic beliefs
and regional power struggles.
Extricate ourselves from blame
as we play an insidious game
"of lesser evils".
Our hypocrisies
are enshrined in anthems
of freedom and compassion
sung mindlessly by millions
within nations built upon
theft and genocide.
Where euphemisms mask and offend
the blood spilt to the ground
in a ever conveniently distant past.
Yet beyond the dictates of
constructs long engraved ,
Do we all not come into being
shrouded by veils of ignorance?
Unknowing of our fate,
Of the borders we inherit,
Of our wealth or deprivations,
Of the costs or dividends
of a history of violence.
Only the fortunate forget this.
Time after time,
We are arrested into attention
when the cold truth of our collective brutality,
absent from our manicured vision,
is brought before us.
As little Aylan was.
Washed upon that Kurdish coastline,
a shell of lost possibility,
stripped by our lack of moral imagination.
Yet it is in this tragic lucidity,
in the pith of our outrage,
in the surge of our compassion
that opportunities lie in wait.