HELICOPTER
- 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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