I cannot remember the scent of figs in the bright citrus of an Alexandrine morning

Or  pale yellow grasses that once carried a baby on a river

Or apricots that tasted like the first prayer on a foreign shore after the long voyage

Or the sound of wild seabirds, wings outstretched  in the early morning light, 

Circling, circling, down for the catch, jubilant return

Then home to the ports lined with nests 

Grief is a nomad even when it packs a map and a compass

Even when nobody invited it in, 

It slips under the skin of the sea, charts a course by the stars

A navigation in pelagic spaces 

To the place where inhuman things become human

We travel past fragments thrown from ancient ships, 

Crushed marble heads turning to dust in the warm winds, 

Secret burial places where love letters lay unread, paintings unfinished

These ports of ghosts, and ghostly things 

These ports are not our ports 

Though we hunger to belong to places with unknown alphabets

In houses where no one remembers the names of poets or the last war

We carry bullets and crushed rose petals

Dried figs in jars that will not survive the voyage

Turning north, past whales singing a morse code that sounds like welcome home

These ice bound ports that lie in the north, in the forever night 

Byzantine golden icons, painted over in Soviet red 

Hidden beneath the wooden floors of broken houses, 

Now the churches are gulags

How will they write this in the history books? A date? A year?

But we will know it was the time when the stars fell from the sky

When soldiers with frayed uniforms and boots that take in the rain

Stole bread and made stew from tree barks, muddy roots

They will die alone. dotting the mountains of war zones like so many birds nests 

Sending radio signals into the vast silence, the last song of homesick boys

On the maps marked with dragon’s kingdoms, some intrepid traveller wrote 

In cursive script

This is the place where love built a house and filled it with warm bread

And purple morning glories.  

We will write love letters and send them into war zones, across frontlines 

Not knowing if anyone will ever find them

We will stand at the edges of conflicts and call out names 

Hoping the sound echoes and bounces like the promise of a distant shore

Unfurling on the horizon, redolent with ripe fruits, home ports at last

What does the land matter if there are no boys to walk on it

What do the ports matter if there no boys to welcome home 

What do the poems matter if there is no one to read them

All we can do is send morse code and hope for light house keepers