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Going Home ::
by Dave
Smith
Last night you went 'home'
on flight ET 701,
but only in name:
for you, there is no home.
Last night you left the land
you hoped would be home
but never was:
for home supposes welcome.
Last night you left behind
a wife and friends
and painful memories of our land of limbo
and exchanged them
for memories of a nightmare
you hoped had gone forever.
Last night, did you sit,
in quiet dignity, as always,
manacled
like a rapist or suicide bomber
between your minders on flight ET 701?
Did they talk to you?
Or did they talk across you,
like one not there,
about football and ordinary, taken for granted things, which,
for you, were unaffordable luxuries
in our land of plenty where you lived
5 years as neither guest nor citizen?
Have you eaten on flight ET 701,
or just watched others eat,
during the inevitable
interminable delays
going home
to the land of chaos and poverty
that proudly calls itself the cradle of civilization?
As if you needed time to think:
what else could you do these two thousand days,
forbidden, as you were,
as if non-human,
the age-old right
to sleep at night
having earned your keep and dignity?
I know I will meet you again
one day
in a place of no sorrow or tears
where you will smile eternally
and dreams will hold no fear.
And I pray
that I will meet you before then
in a place of peace
with wife on arm
and children round your feet,
and we will sit and
eat together laughing,
as in the ancient plan.
Till then, my friend,
I ask your forgiveness
for my country,
which, espousing liberty,
spewed you out,
a champion of liberty where there is none.
And I hope and pray
that someone,
somewhere,
will read this lament of two lands with no soul,
unworthy of you and those you represent;
and reading, will reflect,
and reflecting, choose to act,
and acting,
will render your flight
on ET 701
not in vain.
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