A Photo of Lesvos

I am with my nine year old, Marcus, in Mytilini harbour

In a cafe that is grand and antiquated and antique

The ceiling is high, the chandeliers resplendent

I see it in the twenties, clientele drinking summer tea

Watching Greek refugees arriving in the dockland

From the Anatolian province, no longer part of Greece

Now more refugees are making the same journey

Landing here in darkness, on crowded rubber boats

Marcus loves dinosaurs, he often reads about them

His favourite, predictably, the Tyrannosaurus Rex

Recently he told me that T-Rex comes from Greek and Latin

Specifically the words for Tyrant Lizard King

I laughed as he said this, thought about those predators

Assad and Erdogan, Putin and Trump

The Tyrant Lizard Kings behind the current crisis

Cold blooded reptiles who know the taste of flesh

Dusk softly falls, darkening the dusty harbour

The decorative lamps coming alive along the bay

A family stops at the bench opposite the cafe

All sitting down to rest, except the little boy

They have the stillness that comes from being used to waiting

An air of resignation, shot through with weary hope

Beyond their silhouettes, a coastguard destroyer

As sleek and grey and ruthless as a shark

Yesterday we met a friend at the gates of Moria

Glimpsed the shabby camp, the metropolis of tents

A ghetto in an olive grove, a prison on a hillside

After we left, Marcus questioned why it was all there

I found myself talking about western imperialism

The political crisis, the legacy of debt

Marcus looked confused - I had lost my audience

What I should have said to him is something like this:

We care about people that we love, or know, or think are like us

But all the other people, we instinctively distrust

They are like dogs to us, or aliens, we subject them to hatred

Take all that we can from them, deny that they exist

This is the way that the earth spins around us

And we are the lucky ones, through the accident of birth

If we were Syrian, or Iraqi, or Kurdish, or Afghan

We might be on that bench, with nothing in this world