Sea Prayer

of transitions and things we should love

It took me just a while to finish this book. It will be a long time before I forget it. 

As I go back and linger on the words, and the images of happy times, normal times, times which we as ordinary people living ordinary times so so often count for nothing. The aromas of markets, the touch of flowers, the feel of familiar skin, the fealty of a lined face, the promise of a breeze, the beating heart of moira. Luckily, we have the luxury of finding this in our lives every day, even though we might just miss it, ignore it or not even notice it. 

Until, like the father and the son in the book, we stand beside an ocean, contemplating a tiny boat and the vast waters, and wonder what fate and life have in front of us, when we get on that boat to escape, to find a new home in an unknown place. When we've left behind our snug homes, because it was a crater now, when we've a left our balmy skies because they were too full of fireballs, because we've left our markets because they were too full of bodies of friends we didn't even have time to mourn for. 

And as the boats of escape get ready,  we say our final Sea Prayer.

Dedicated as it is to Alan Kurdi, the three year old Syrian refugee who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach safety in Europe in September 2015, this book will transport you into your own world of safety and beauty and life and breath as none can do. And break your heart for the cruelty which only a human being is capable of inflicting on another. Because a man is the acme of contradictions. He can love and destroy with equal felicity. 

Get the book. Read the book. See your heart break. 

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Hear these poems of childhood on Uncut Poetry -

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