A day spent scratching civilisation’s sores –

Amnesty calls for Urgent Action;

a ministerial mouth, mean as a steel trap

closes another deluded seeker of asylum

behind barbed wire; civil liberties

are spooked by terror; girl children

trafficked to sexual servitude –

and I’m spent too. Not even that trusty spur,

the great-grandmother of my children

dead in another camp, another winter, another story,

can prick this chilled indifference to bleed –

although my mind’s rubbed raw, my heart

is dry as yesterday’s crusts.

But then from pages listlessly turned

a photograph slips. Silhouette

against dazzling sun and sea, you run,

and blood, salt as the sea, red as your T-shirt,

runs, your summer’s gift, in my veins,

knowing you bear your Yiddish name with joy

untainted yet by Holocaust darkness,

knowing you knew that moment’s rapture,

of running, with open hands, towards a glittering world.