July 2005, you surrendered.
You had been carried
on the shoulders of the people
for decades,
so when did you notice
our lakes were freezing?
When our wounds opened like bouquets
leaking life
persuasively
as our Tricolor hemmorrhaged pride
and roses rotted on our graves.

Your defeated words
shook us in the same way bombs
shock suburban communities
but still it came to this,
that we post-surrender patriots
should walk the caverns of the interlude
with downcast faces;

that our war-torn thoughts
should glimpse failures bones hidden
in our mind’s soiled green recesses,

undeniable that our rich history
now should stink like an abattoir
Time maddening in its slow passage,
unappeased.

Yet, the asylum seekers still come
to our shores –
phantoms of our migratory past –
and the doves nest and coo
in our trusted oak.

The Armenian shopkeeper
handles with care the potatoes
as if he too feels their value
transmuted one hundred and sixty years.
The Pakistani butcher is more sparing
with the meat.

We find in this a wiser worth:
that any land as beautiful as ours
is to be shared.
Our sparkling emerald dreams must fade now
into the whiteness of peace
into the blankness of the page