The camps lie rotting on
the bare landscape, and
the humans forgotten, drift
as dusty shadows waiting for
that which will not come,
and lives move silently from
day to day as children play
in the dust of nothingness,
a grim tableau of existence
in stasis with status,
caught at the border between
hope and hopelessness,
as politicians justify and
officials apply the ointment
that does not heal and is not
the balm of Gilead, and the
workers of charities trudge
along the paths of dust doing
all they can but nothing they
want, while the bigoted say,
without knowing much of anything
at all, in choral tribal voice,
“We don’t want them, they are
not from us!”,
and we, being all too aware,
having seen and averted our
eyes, aestheticise our feelings
in a distant, curated sadness,
for we are here not there,
but what remains is dust
and the politics of distance.

 

19/2/2026