Elegy at Sea

i.

To return to this land undrowned 

                                               is to not voyage across the sea.

                                                                            Today, there are fishing boats

deserted at sea. Half-eaten

bodies of fishermen afloat on 

                                        water as twilight heralds another

unrecorded tragedy. In the history 

of the sea, there are bodies of 

families becoming collectibles, 

rafts, and remains settling beneath 

the sea floor. There are no dreams 

here. If at all there are dreams, 

they become flotsam, liquid bits 

of lives buried in a liquid casket. 

In the sky, a caravan of birds. 

They are not like us who race 

into the fragile arms of the sea each 

time the earth turns into a relic,

a storehouse of bullets and bombs

for our living and dead children.

Here, the light of joy flutters

and dies each time a cargo

of drowned bodies returns to the

shore. Sometimes there are bodies

unfound on the body of the sea until

months after, until grief, like

water, soaks the relatives of those 

missing after a shipwreck. 

ii.

Today I think about all the 

immigrants lost to the sea, 

to the whirlwind of loss that 

engulfs everywhere in this 

land where there are open graves 

for our dead. Who will sorrow over 

these losses, these dreams of lights 

that never survive the day? Beneath the 

sea, the children of moribund countries.

Sons and daughters of those praying

to God to heal the wide wounds of the 

world in a mosque tonight. There are no 

flowers for the dead ones buried at sea. 

No gravestones. No one to write their 

epitaphs. No one to hold the arms

of immigrants as they drown, as they

reach for the world that’s distant from

them. What becomes of those who

visit the sea each day to grieve the

invisible corpses of their loved ones,

those who wonder how delicate the

body of water? There are no names

for seafarers lost to the sea, no names

for those who are gone beyond the tweets 

of birds who return to the sea daily to grieve 

human ruins.