Borders.

Marred memories reign,
Fought once, now lost in time’s haze,
Bitterness remains.

Their boundaries shift,
Senile minds forget the past,
Empires clash anew.

Two rivals still vie,
Their borders vague, ill-defined,
History repeats.

Steve Halstead.

Nicosia

NICOSIA.

I look across the city where I was born,

A happy childhood, but all too brief.

How I waited in vain for my friends to call.

Saw mum and dad on the corner of every street.

 

In my mind, I see the family that lived next door,

Their house now falling in on itself.

It would be good to see the children I played with back then,

To see if they felt abandoned like me.

 

I didn’t want them to leave, I missed them so much,

Too young to understand what they had done wrong.

They didn’t seem so different to me.

They used to give me their sweets.

 

I know now that they were the victims.

How in their absence, we blamed them.

Yet, life always seemed a little less colourful,

And I have waited forty years to see them again.

 

Who decided that we should live apart?

When was it decided that we should visit a different church?

It is always the preachers who get their own way.

Are we not the same people from the same place?

 

Nicosia.

By: Steve Halstead.