Migrant Tales Literary: Poem – Beyond Recognition

BEYOND RECOGNITION

Part I

Jella played with the sand, spade
digging earnestly at the dry earth.
Jaref thrust out a hand, grabbing
thief-like, as older brothers do.

Jella cried. First in despair, but
then in the corner of the yard,
there under the peeling gable,
standing troubled, forlorn,
like a totem of the oppressed.

Jaref knew himself declared,
a bully in the sight of the world.
Conscience prodded, but
he just stared – stubborn, defiant,
squatted in the shallow sand pit,
a small distance from the house.

And though he might deny it,
her pain dug at his callow heart.

The screaming rocket hit the upper floor.
Noise erupted, huge and flat
like a tolling bell,
clasping at Jaref, stealing him instantly
towards a soundless universe.
He watched, mute, as the gable wall fell,
smothering his sister in dust
and unearthliness.

Part II

The newspaper mentioned five dead.
In hidden rooms, crumpled maps
on wooden tables showed
pencilled roads towards retaliation.

Part III

Jaref knew nothing save an absence. An age
of gnawing deafness to the world.
The youth veered towards maturity
while hope and beauty lay feigned,
swathed in a stained white shawl,
sleeping in a dusty grave.

Pain wrapped in numbness,
a weight pushing on all sides.
Only one sure relief,
a raffish friend, seeking to console –

Revenge!

A force majeure mission,
for love brutalised beyond recognition.

Part IV

Jaref strapped on the belt.
His friends looked on solemn.
A remote trigger.
He walked away resolved
to find his place,
to stand among the unknown faces
as a totem of the oppressed
at the margins of the broken spaces.

Part V

Aschil, soon to be twenty and married,
busied herself among the stalls. A proud
father wafted like a shawl at her side,
offering the easy advice of one not
given to fussing over craft or colours.

He was there to serve, in a declaration
of his daughter’s worthiness.
His role merely to proffer his wage,
though he beamed with priceless joy
for his daughter’s coming of age.

Part VI

She peered inside the shadowed interior
beneath a gently billowing canopy,
at wares strung on bright yellow strings,
lights and lanterns of myriad crystal bounty,
all winking blithe in the morning sun.
A light, she reflected – a good omen.

As Aschil turned, the tented wall lit up.
Time becalmed. And piece by piece,
the thronged scene split asunder,
as flying shards of fevered metal roared at
the crowds with furious thunder.

Canvas and flesh yielded without rebuff.
Aschil fell, eyes staring at the final terror.
She let go her last breath, crushed.

A love brutalised forever.

Part VII

The newspaper mentioned 43 dead.
In hidden rooms, crumpled maps
on wooden tables showed
pencilled roads towards retaliation.

– Mark