A red tide on three sides
German mortar and Allied frigates
And at Kilitbahir Kale
Swatted by Turkish bullet
Trumpet
Charge
Bayonet
Scarecrow Scarecrow Scarecrow
Allahu Akbar
God Save the King
Ottoman Fifth Army
Royal Irish Fusiliers
Dede
Granda
An almond tree showered Baba
Who pecked them from the ground
With a Kabalak on his head
Looking out on the Hellespont
Beside his eldest son
Two boys wrestled beneath the cliff
Disturbing the fish below
Above some hundred thousand souls
The fish would not disturb
The strait feeds the sea
the sea feeds the rain
the rain finds a lough
The shores of Lough Neagh aren’t quite red
They’re green with thick algal bloom
Like sludge you can poke or scoop
That would frighten you out of the water
And into the warmth of your car
The heat blasting until you sweat
There’s no dust, just a damp bog
And in winter it would swallow you whole
Along with the badgers and leaves
You’d travel the mucky peat
Till you found half your family
Preserved underneath
You find yourself back in that silted water
Fingernails torn to the quick
Sifting the mud over and over
When they’re buried in the clay
On an isolated beach head
Three thousand miles away
Where your great grandfather
Shot your great grandfather
They tanned together
In the Thracian summer
A flask of raki
A flask of whiskey
They drank from each other
Till the red tide drank them back