Libyan Lament


The air was hot, and thick to breathe,
The sun was red, and weeping,
The day they fled the burning town,
The stench of death still reeking,

Machines they came,
From cloudless skies,
Then came the sound of thunder,
Then flash of light,
Then blast of flame,
That tore their life asunder,

They ran in fear from NATO’s hate,
To the ocean’s cooling breeze,
And looked across the waters,
To the nations of those seas,
But saw no trace of Christian grace,
No tears, no kind reprieve,
Just jackal smiles and TV cheers,
That hailed a nation’s fate.

Tricked, betrayed, begrimed they slept,
On desert shores, abandoned,
For weeks their hopeless vigil kept,
Despair so deep it maddened,
It almost drove them to the rope,
Until they heard the captain’s words,
“My ship she puts to sea tonight,
But for that there is a price,
For my ship is named and named quite right,
The hopeless ones Last Hope.”

They paid him all their money,
They paid with acts of shame,
And then they prayed to silent gods
For words “We sail” that came.

The captain smelled of drink and death,
And smiled with dark-stained teeth,
He told them, ‘I’ve your money,
Now please descend beneath’,
He gave commands,
The crew obeyed,
And threw them down the hold,
To stench of oil,
And human waste,
The young, the frail, the old.

The engines throbbed, the people moaned,
In darkness deep they crossed the sea,
That led them from old Tripoli,
To the shores of Italy,

The night grew long,
The sea rebelled,
With wind and thunder drumming,
The waves rose high, the captain drank,
The crew climbed ropes taut humming,

They tried their best to save the ship,
To save themselves, and all,
They fought the storm,
They fought the wall
They fought with all they had,
But Neptune wove a ghastly wave,
That broke her back in two,
And down she went,
That good Last Hope,
To the cold and calm below.

The lonely dead soon washed ashore,
In twos and threes and more,
On foreign sands they rolled and lay,
On every bay and shore,
As TV sprouted tragic tales,
And asked, “who is to blame”?
But no answer dared they give,
And so no answer came.