Two Poems by Lynda Tavakoli

 

AFTERTHOUGHT  

 

Tell the displaced they will find a home,  

if they do not die while walking. 

 

Tell the maimed that in five years’ time 

they will have learned to crawl again. 

 

Tell the buried they will only live 

inside the beating hearts of those remaining. 

 

Tell the orphaned that the sympathy of others 

will never heal their loneliness. 

 

Tell the abandoned they may one day 

be remembered for their fortitude. 

 

Tell the starved that skin and bone 

has satisfied its own hyperbole. 

 

Tell the missing they are simply numbers now, 

lost within the ether of statistics and conveniency.     

 

Tell the children you have not forgotten them 

when their images have ceased to occupy our TV screens. 

  

Tell whoever wants to listen that the world is surely lost 

if the dead are but an afterthought. 

 

 

 

 

   

WANT 

 

 

A silence of drones finds solace in an empty sky, 

and below, 

     hope.

Lynda Tavakoli lives in County Down, Northern Ireland, where she facilitates an adult creative writing class and is a tutor for the Seamus Heaney Award for schools.

A poet, novelist and freelance journalist, Lynda’s writings have been published in the UK, Ireland, the US and the Middle East, with Farsi and Spanish translations. She has been winner of both poetry and short story prizes in Listowel, The Westival International Poetry Prize and runner- up in The Blackwater International Poetry Competition and Roscommon Poetry Competition.

Her poems have also appeared in The Irish Times, New Irish Writing. Lynda’s debut poetry collection, ‘The Boiling Point for Jam’ is published by Arlen House and includes these three poems about the different aspects of war.