Rose of Damascus

The candle stutters in the desert breeze
 Sets the characters dancing on a dusty page
 The hearts of darkness beat in the starlight
 A burning bush, the ashes glow, charcoals blacken the embers
 Show the words of the prophet
 The promise of miracles, prayers of deliverance, faith in the fire
 Before a timeless dawn the shadows crawl, the dew evaporatеs
 The rising sun signals the movemеnt a world in motion
 The woodsmoke lingers in the patchy thorns
 Where partridge scuffle a nervous
 squall, a panicking hare breaks from his cover
 The figures wander through familiar lands
 The razored rock, the scorching sands
 Follow the footsteps of lost generations
 That gathered the flowers to place in their baskets
 The scent of the petals carries the memories
 The eternal fragrance of the rose of Damascus
 In the back of a bouncing car
 Potholes abound on the dark road to city lights
 Heading for coffee bars, singing along to the songs on the radio
 The spell of a Friday night
 Bewitches their hearts and banishes sadness
 Lost in their teenage dreams,
 careless and free to their fate, they're oblivious
 Her blouse unbuttoned, she opens the collar
 Checks the mirror for her lipstick smile
 Smoothing her dress, she glances behind her
 Condemning eyes are now so far away
 She moves in the bustling crowds
 Her confidence shows, her presence invisible
 The beat of the pulsing night lifting her
 High on the wings of a butterfly
 Deaf to the gathering storm, screams in the darkness
 Whispers in alleyways
 She joins with the growing throng, carried away unaware of her destiny
 She breathes in the wind of change, heady with hope
 The promise of freedoms
 Leaving the lights behind, a tear in her eye
 She heads into the darkness
 She wraps her skirts in ancient tissue paper
 Folds them away within the cellophane
 Her heels in boxes, her blouse fully buttoned
 She hides her heart until another day
 She breathes in the wind of change, heady with hope
 The promise of freedoms
 Joining the growing throng, carried away unaware of her destiny
 Defiance scrawled on the walls
 Inspiring the ranks of keyboard warriors
 The authors are all long gone, snatched in their sleep
 Or dreaming in uniforms
 Guarding the cellar doors from the chill powdered snows
 From the Anti-Lebanon
 That silently lay a shroud on the fields of the dead
 And the Damask roses
 Colourless men under colourless skies herd broken creatures
 Reeking of fear into dark caves for slaughter
 Desiccated heads pinned on the rusty railings, in a flyblown square
 Where the pendulums of corpses, hanging from the streetlights
 Mark silent time, on a never-ending war
 Cynical rockets fly in on soft targets
 Creeping artillery round up the districts
 Over which helicopters hover, carrying Pandora's boxes to eviscerate
 To eliminate the survivors below
 Sleek roaring jets glint on the horizon
 To arrive in a moment to unleash merciless retribution
 A hellish symphony, a monotonous cacophony
 A soundtrack for the carnage
 On the petrified innocents, the interminable onslaught
 From unchallenged skies
 She came to in the rubble, in the debris of her memories
 In a broken world she couldn't recognise
 She wanders in the landscape, a solemn wraithlike figure
 In the company of ghosts she knew before
 Through the canyons of the labyrinth
 The twisted concrete skeletons
 The clouds of smoke and dust that fill the skies
 The blinding light, it fell out of the heavens
 And changed her life forever
 She's no one left, everything has gone, she knows she has to leave
 Nowhere to shelter, no food, no heat, no water
 Struggling to survive
 On the edge of the shadows, she's aware the snipers follow;
 The clock is ticking down
 She was searching for a vision, some sign to give direction
 In this wasteland where it's a curse to be alive
 When there across the crippled street, on a terracotta balcony
 A splintered shard of colour caught her eye
 The sweet familiar fragrance, the delicate fragile petals
 Of the Damask rose
 The flowers blown and battered, the roots exposed and tattered
 It wills to thrive
 Her nurturing hand wraps the treasured cuttings
 In a fist of moistened clay
 To carry on her journey, to find another homeland
 Somewhere to blossom and come alive
 The windscreen wipers battle futilely
 Against the swirling dust storms
 Their soothing rhythm and the movement of the bus
 Providing some temporary reassurance
 Lulling her into an uneasy sleep
 Cautiously threading their way along ancient smugglers routes
 Down through the valleys
 Under a ceiling of stark starlight, her only baggage
 The fragments of the horrors she couldn't leave behind
 The passage was paid for in greedy exchanges
 With callous strangers full of promises and peddling hope
 Whose cold lecherous eyes followed her
 As she took the transport up the coast
 To a deserted inlet out of sight of prying eyes and guardian angels
 She felt the sands shift under her feet
 The waves racing up onto the moonlit beach
 Dancing around her ankles
 The ebb pulling her further into the swelling tide
 Allowing the powerful but gentle lift of the chilling waters
 To carry her to waiting hands
 To be pulled up onto the fearful overcrowded boat
 She stares out into the night towards the dark sea
 That disappears into the horizon
 Her past slips into the distance behind
 Her as she nurses the slender waxed-cotton bundle
 That holds her treasured stems, her roots, her legacy
 Her destiny