May 2020
Author's Note: These are the first two poems in a series I am writing, tentatively called “Poems From Babylon.”
I chose the symbol of Babylon because I want to write of things common to dominant empires, so I range freely between the
past and the present although much of the concrete imagery of place is from the ancient city. Nor is Babylon one place in
the present. It encompasses the wealthy west. In writing of detention centres, I have my own country in mind.
The narrator was once a refugee. The story arc I have for him also permits some wide-ranging observations.
Some of the poems in this cycle are ones I have already written. Others, such as the second one here, reuse fragments from previous poems.
The narrator was once a refugee. The story arc I have for him also permits some wide-ranging observations.
Some of the poems in this cycle are ones I have already written. Others, such as the second one here, reuse fragments from previous poems.
Morteza on Babylon’s Wall
From the city’s high wall
Morteza looks out over the plain.
The roads are choked with refugees.
Morteza knows that it is hope
that buoys them, makes them risk all
in dangerous seas and foreign lands.
He has seen their dreams.
Decades before he too dreamed of freedom
at the road’s end in the golden city.
He remembers his escape,
the warning that they were coming for him,
hugging and kissing his family,
walking through the city’s shadows,
up the mountain, over the cold, snow-filled pass
and long, weary months later
walking through the gates of Babylon.
He was only nineteen.
He studied hard, married, had children,
became famous for his surgical skill,
grew wealthy, travelled annually
to the land of his birth,
taking the magic of his hands
and bearing gifts of prosthetic limbs.
Now he weeps.
Babylon, once generous of spirit,
has closed its mighty gates and shut its heart.
Detention Centers darkly flower
on islands far from the great city.
They are nightmare places
of heat, hostility and hopelessness,
more desolate than a prison.
He sighs as he descends the wall.
He asks himself: Why has Babylon
forsaken her once high ideals?
What has darkened her heart?
Bright lights drew me to the golden city.
Have they forever dimmed?
Morteza Talks to his Grandchild
You ask, little one, why
I return each year to my birthplace,
the country from which I fled
and where if I had stayed
I would have been tortured.
I can only say that I have heard
the orphan's cry, the widows groan,
and seen the limbless victims of war.
I go, taking what gifts I can,
touch soft and gentle like a kiss,
words as kind as healing balm
and empathy that is palm to palm.
©2020 Neil Creighton
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