I am sleeping in your sweet Leitrim air.
Clouds of summer rain will gather,
day ahead calm and lightly wet,
enough to prompt the red, purple and
saffron flowers in your window boxes
into extra depth of colour, adding
a bright polish only rain can give.
Near Titanic, we learn, in a vastness of sea,
an ocean of such deepness creatures need
their own light systems, Titan, a capsule bolted
shut from the outside with sixteen metal locks,
is lost. Wanting adventure, four wealthy people
and one son, Suleman Dawood, 19, sit, momentarily,
we think, under the great salty press.
Trapped, measuring their small breaths,
eeking out thinning oxygen, edging panic away,
tapping methodically each thirty minutes,
we imagine their slow last silence.
Now news it was all fools’ hope.
‘Implosion’, such a rich word, a rapid crush,
gasped last breath forced into short bubbles.
Meanwhile, crowded from view by 4,000 miles
and a multinational rescue effort for the five;
seven hundred people desperately squeezed
onto Adriana, a leaking boat, are sinking
close to Greece. Their desire is only for refuge.
Mohamed Ahmad, 18, a Syrian son lost, hoped for
work, his photo embedded in his mother’s phone.
One boat, from Greece, shadowed the coming
moments. Inexplicable. Nothing is fast there.
He feels their boat capsize, planks splitting, slowly,
surrounded by the drowning, some sinking voiceless,
some with the fervour of thrashing hope,
their memories of bright rain-dusted flowers
totally absent, facing their grave end.