'A low voice as of a god. Waves led by the moon.' Photo: by Quino Al on Unsplash
Mediterranean at El Palo, Malaga
Poem by Harvey Gillman
A warm evening. The low voice of waves against the sand.
Inevitable. A bridge. Here you can cross. Here there are no walls.
No custom posts. No defining flag. No halls for inspecting
the luggage of one’s life. No pack smuggled over. No flight.
No call to declare. No name is needed, no tribe.
We stroll along the coast. Stop to listen to the plash
of sea on land. A guitar played by an unknown player.
A prayer ascends from the darkening beach
to a lantern illuminating the falling night.
A low voice as of a god. Waves led by the moon.
Far off at the horizon a boat follows a star.
We stop and walk and stop. The message of the sea.
Whispers. Here there are no missiles of death
launched from one side to another, one tribe to another,
at the far end of this sea. Yet, on this beach, even here,
lanterns shed a mournful light. The sea whispers. It recalls
its far-off journey to burning lands and broken bridges,
where fragments of music and children lie shattered on the shore.
A low voice of mourning as beyond the horizon. Far from here,
bodies are floating among the waves. My brother, sister, child,
soon buried under many waters with your fragile boats
freighted with dreams of rivers of plenty.
You too heard the messages. What the mountain said,
what the forest declared. Hunger and anger pushed at your shoulder.
They said across the water was a land of warm evenings,
poetry and music and palm trees. An embracing sea.
We are all dragged along in the nets of our longing.
