A poem a week for 2012 - A record of a year in the life of... #MadeleineMcCann & #MartinAllen

Where Do All The Children Play?

Five years? Thirty years?
The difference? measured
only in fallen tears.  Two
mothers count their days
in agonising anxious fears
of unsaid words and unsung songs;
of righting schoolkids' playground wrongs;
and tea parties; and birthday treats;
and ghosts disappearing
down familiar streets.
And ordinary boring days
of rain and dogs and holidays -
on beaches; joys, - long forgotten...
And guilt and pointing fingers; Rotten
intrusions by strange inquisitions
and journalists and politicians.

And hopes raised only
to be dashed, as tongues all wag
and stories flashed
- no privacy for anyone -
a missing daughter,
missing son, lost
in the deafening sound of grass
growing underfoot and clocks rush fast
forward through another year,
of pain, anxiety and fear.

And still the desperation flows,
the search goes on;
the weight of sorrow grows,
not lessened by the tide or time,
petitioning against these crimes
of stolen lives.  And welling pits
of deepest and eternal hell
as families their stories tell and tell
and tell to ears grown blind and deaf.
- Embarrassed in their own relief.

Is this really the best that
we can offer to these fathers
and these mothers?

...And what if this was ...your child?
...your life?  - my brothers?

The Missing List – 23/12/09

Madeleine McCann: Portuguese refusal to reopen inquiry 'shows no sense’ – The Telegraph – 29/04/12