Margins of Pandora

Tim’s father had been a refugee once he put down his fight and his gun The story is that he embarked on the very last ship leaving East Prussia Under siege tanks and bombs from above fireworks of madness and defeat A wounded soldier which is what gave him the pass for the vessel Lucky escape and transition from war and a past razed to the ground Guilty of being a follower of an inhumane quest for territory and glory Like so many others he left behind what little he had but he was alive A belt buckle remains and a green Army bread pouch a medal or two The misplaced person’s passport with a picture of a morbid young man -Uncertainty and a fresh start licking his scars- Hans climbed over the wall in Berlin and was torn to pieces by guard dogs Was gunned down from merciless watch towers before he crawled onto a mine They called it the death strip where he paid the price for fleeing East Germany He did not die a clean death but bled out rather slowly bits of brain on his skull His family was punished by demise and posthumous incriminations of the regime -Passed on for ultimate freedom- Mohamed had never done any harm had been a street vendor selling fruit seeds Olives and nuts from his plot near the cemetery in Aleppo had recently widened His business offering bolts screws and hinges before the sky turned unhinged Had scraped soot from bricks and straightened nails for unbending the havoc Sort of recycling before life screwed him for good lost his plot and he surrendered To the miserable fact that his wife mother and offspring found their graves Under the rubble covered under the ruins of shelter just in time for a new dawn One almond tree still shedding blossoms skewed over by prayer and wings From a shot down aeroplane with its insignia burnt into his soul and transition Running on empty with the fuselage leaking he joined the trek towards salvation -No family no tower of strength the minarets silent- Fatima stood in line for bread and for water in a long queue stripped to her core In the Gaza Strip bereft of undying belief values possessions and dignity as she Had toiled in the camp for decades been born there and so were her children Took stock of history unfolding once more with passage and strangled outlook Looked at the sea of misery and hope of the glimmering ocean but gun boats -Hindered escape because Palestine was besieged- Anton is a charity worker full of faith in humanity idealistic and forthcoming He has not given up hope yet but the odds are stacked against his mission Food convoys are stopped at the eviscerating border under a crescent of power He is aware of burrows and tunnels to Egypt but lingers on borrowed intent Quite strange that the rich can order Kentucky Fried Chicken from Sinai They are thriving unhindered like they always do when the living gets rough And that weapons and detonators move freely below the surface of anger Dug into memory of explosions and flashes of unresolved conflict’s arrest -Flight fight surrender or fate- Traffickers of human cargo offer safe passage in overflowing rubber dinghies Sealed in suffocating lorries and crossing mountains of torn hearts selling out Fake documents and fake illusions exiting in transit never arriving in safety Frost on peaks of cast out shadows or heat in the desert a mirage of the sun Drought in the traveller’s souls and no water sprung from God’s heaven Not just a trickle of migrants but a flood of seekers a marginalized crowd -Blessed are the meek naked at last- A triad of poverty race and injustice and there are many triangles in the Equation of greed self-righteousness and demarcation spelt into eternity Splitting nations so called races and ethnic divide and infinite schisms Of nature and nurture where altars and prayer mats disentangle from faith Divine intervention projected penance and an alliance of exploitation -What will be has to be but will it and why- Tim’ s father is dead now and there is hardly a trace of Hans or Mohamed Fatima still hangs onto a thread of persistence though the noose is in place Border guards carry on to make deals with traffickers and reincarnated devils Margins of terror and error persist to draw arbitrary lines in the sand and Desperate spirits succumb to lineage of helplessness and delineation of rights -And Tim dreams of not giving up on his dream- -But Pandora has taken a good luck at the limits- -Affronted by boundaries and endless frontiers- 19th February 2019