Everything fades in time

Memories, birds in the trees,

Even these dreadful expulcations 

That old druid time plays the same deceptions

Plays havoc with the mind

As we reach out to touch each other's skin

And take that leap we hope 

Will find us somewhere human.

Sardonic wit, the sceptical glance,

The silent prayer

Converge into this plea

To wear your learning lightly

Reach out to Syrian and Lebanese

Assyrian, Druze, Maronite, Ezedi

Who share their journeyings with us

Come, come cross the same seas

That Homer once travelled.

Men with guns and savage

Draw us into this web of separation, murder? 

For we know we, too,  can

Kill or be killed for a necessity.

Now in the torn wreckage of those 

Bastions of Islamic scholarship:

Damascus, the ancient universities

Of Baghdad, these mosques of Constantinople,

That were once churches,

Where worshippers share the poppies, that have their  roots in men's veins, 

With the ghosts of all the murdered Byzantines again.