Syria
June 25, 2011
It’s pink because the blood is done
but it was there:
faded skyline, washed with sunset,
magenta cloud bank, shot with grey.
He talks to a lense
straight to camera,
by a camp in a veil
of peony haze.
He talks from a screen
surrounded by my pot plants:
‘If you had a daughter they took her.
If you had a house they burnt it down.’
And screen after screen
is glittering through my living room
a rose scarf wrapped
around her head.
Pink, the colour of a country without oil.
Pink, the colour of the absent help.
His eyes are pink
as he talks about his daughter.
Pink, the colour of washed away red.