Not Waving but Drowning

A powerful memory of my friend Ken, until recently a resident of my adopted town Kalkan in Turkey, is of a January swim from Kaputaş Beach to the Blue Caves. It was choppy. The sea was cold and we turned back after 500m or so.

Ken broke off to swim in as soon as we rounded the headland but I carried on and landed further up the beach where our clothes were. On reaching our things, I got concerned that Ken had not yet arrived. Running back I found him flat out at the water’s edge. He had got caught in a rip that eddied around the headlands. He told an astonished me that he had gone down twice, adding “I knew if I went down again I would not be coming up”. The rip threw him out. He managed to swim in and collapsed traumatized on the shoreline. Ken is a survivor.

Now, together with his wife and partner Laura, he is on the Polish Ukrainian border. They are there with their van, Molly, loaded with chocolate from their son’s confectionery business. They have been very warmly welcomed. On a late night WhatsAp chat, he messaged

“Such misery here, I walk through the areas with permanent tears in my eyes. So much grief based on women and children having left their men folk behind. Some children have high spirits but just because they do not really grasp what is actually going on”

The poignancy of his words cut through and affected me deeply. Waking in the night I wrote this, driven by anger as much as sadness

The Russians Have Children Too

Weep! Russian mothers!
Weep salt sting, acid
Soot-stained, brimstone tears
Weep,
As the spent torn, bent worn
Corpses of your sons return.

They did not deserve this.
Those Igor, Nikolay, Dimitris
Your sons! Your boys
Did not deserve to go
Unwarned, unprepared
Into the hellfire of a murderous resistance
Into the frozen, final grip
Of an ice-cold turret.
Unreasoning terror,
Their epitaph.

Weep,
For those poor Russian Mothers.
Whose tears will not be softened
By the comfort a hero’s death brings
Their sons did not die
For Freedom and Dignity
But for a lie
A wicked, vainglorious lie.

But those Ukrainian mothers
Whose sons and daughters died defiant,
Died united, died believing,
Their tears will have some small sweetness.
Theirs the comfort of knowing
That in freely bestowing
Their precious lives
Their children’s sacrifice will be carried
In the heart of every freedom loving person.

To those Russian mothers
We can but offer the comfort,
The meagre, small crumb comfort
Of Pity’s thin embrace.
But stay!
For the tide may yet turn,
Memorial Candles more brightly burn.

Rise up! Mothers of Russia!
Take down the strutting, barefaced popinjay
Who has brought this bitter day.
Throw off despair
Take to the streets
Let your melancholy anger strike purpose
That will find echo across the World
And Igor, Nikolay, Dmitri
Can Rest in Peace

#Putin.IdesofMarch

Dedicated to Ken and Laura, oh! and Molly