With a nudge from my on-line writers group, Writer’s Abroad, and some inspiration from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his poem the ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, this poem borrows its first two lines from the thundering lines of that epic poem, and then wonders off to some unknown place….

…

Water, water everywhere

Nor any drop to drink

Across white sand, across high dunes

Our heavy feet still sink

The waves upon the shore did beat

The sun a hammer pounding heat

Nor any drop to drink

 

Nor clouds we saw, nor birds, nor green

No nature blessed our eye

Across the miles, along the shore

The sun beat from the sky

The sound of water in our ears

The sound of silence fed our fears

No Nature blessed our eye

 

We dared not leave the cursed splash

We dared not desert cross

But miles of water, bitter salt

No thirst away could wash

The heat, the shimmering, hazy light

Oasis rises in our sight

We dared not desert cross

 

We curse our life, we curse our luck

To wash from storm to shore

To live through drowning in the sea

And then to die once more

We curse survival, curse the waves

Curse the fate to which we’re slaves

To wash from storm to shore

Dhaka 2013