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HELICOPTER

  • Writer: Jean Rafferty
    Jean Rafferty
  • Jun 9
  • 2 min read

By JIM AITKEN



MacCaig compared one to a damaged insect.

I heard mine long before I saw it.


And I saw the heads of little children

with their parents pointing to the sky,

the children’s eyes full of wonder.


The day was bright and the sky clear

like a gigantic sheet of blue paper,

and I looked upwards and saw it too;

the strange shape and the repetitive sound

of rotating blades; the bumble bee buzz

magnified a million times.


All the faces were happy ones. The object

overhead a welcome interruption

for the shoppers, the walkers and the tourists.


And then it struck me as I looked away

how reactions to this knowing sound,

or to the sound of burring drones,

would be met with parents and their children

in Gaza, the West Bank or in Yemen

where wonder long ago gave way to horror.


THE GIRL IN THE FIRE


For Ward Jalal Al- Shaikh Khalil


The whole world saw her silhouette

dancing through the flames of a school.

There was something ethereal,

some strange scene from a horror film,

of a girl running for her life.


Her image, presented as news,

a spectacle for the viewers,

was of a real flesh and blood girl

running from a bombed-out classroom,

of a girl running for her life.


Of a Palestinian girl

from Gaza running for her life

like so many other children

screaming, confused and bewildered

at the hatred for her people.


Yet her six-year-old twinkle toes,

a spectral presence in the flames,

ennobled a battered people

traumatised by indifference

as much as missiles and drones.


And the girl too is traumatised

at the world she was born into

but she will run and stand for life,

a real-life girl in a mad world,

childhood gone before it began.





Jim Aitken


Jim Aitken is a poet and dramatist living and working in Edinburgh. He is a tutor in Scottish Cultural Studies with Adult Education and he organises literary walks around the city.


His last poetry collection was Flutterings, 2016 and his last play produced was Letters from Area C, directed by Karen Douglas of SpartaKi in 2017.


These poems first appeared on the Culture Matters website:


 
 
 

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