There is no hiding
From the omnipresent soleil
Though clouds may try
C’est pas possible
D’arrete la Lumiere
Shes magnificent
Elle est magnifique
Et shines
Her crisp beauty
Pour moi
Toujours.

Here lies chalk – the familiar rock of home –
It conjures up bluebirds; outlines comforting whims
Like tennis-courts, a victory horse, the tailor’s art;
For hope-lorn exiles – a cue to how much wanting aches.

There, out at sea, where a silt-grey sky lies heavy
Upon the monotonous tumult of roiling rollers, money
Has crossed hands, so the crafts are readied
For Albion - the magic isle - where families are headed.

Ahmed and Sara, the father and his girl,
Run to the transport to a better world;
Through the dim dawn’s mistle gendarmes call “Arrete!”
Flares are fired and the excitement’s almost sweet.

It’s a race for a place to break a lifetime’s wait,
Sticks crack the resolve of the policemen’s warrant
And they’re on the infirm, ill-inflated dingy
With a hundred others: crushing, cursing, clinging.

“Sara! Sara!” Under she goes beneath the darkness massing.
“Baba! Baba!” Her little arms helplessly pushing nothing
Away, as buried, she drowns beneath the asylum seekers,
Her breath clogged like chalk pores where the water reaches.

Chalk downs, meanwhile, take in all they can
Impervious to the hardness of politicians’
Igneous laws that leave the beleaguered fraught,
Each slow sunrise a cage where freedom was sold short:
Did you too ministers lose a grip by a long, long chalk?