Cameron Smith

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Brumbai and the Pinelets

Click below to read an excerpt a manuscript of a children’s novella.

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The Madness

I knew him in Lebanon . . . 

in Tripoli

a shy man with a warm smile

with a house in the hills outside of town

 no much bigger than a Canadian garage

In Tripoli the Syrians 

were fighting Arafat and the Palestinians

so I went to his house in the hills 

(and he came with me)

to find what was happening to women and children

they were safe . . . relatively

in underground shelters

but the Syrians were there as well

advancing toward the house 

so I ran

but he stayed behind

and I jumped aboard a Red Crescent ambulance

carrying the wounded

the Syrians shot the ambulance full of holes 

but hit no one

We made it to a building at the edge of town 

where a Canadian surgeon 

was working in the basement 

as I entered a nurse approached 

she was carrying a man’s leg

the surgeon could have saved it she said 

but there was no time 

there were too many needing care

I watched the surgeon

operating in the dark

 using  a miner’s head lamp to see 

as he removed a piece of shrapnel 

from a man’s skull

while standing in water  about an inch deep

that had trickled d down the basement stairs

and I could think of nothing but the madness

this absolutely insane madness 

that so often rules the world we live in

Now

forty-three years later

nothing has changed

the Americans bomb a girls’ school in Iran

and a hundred and seventy-five  are dead

almost all young girls, and a few teachers

not an accident analysts say

but deliberate targeting 

because the school was attached

to a military site

these were precision guided munitions 

an official said

and there would have been no mistakes

Fury is not enough

and disgust is visceral

while despair is simply self-indulgent

and the overwhelming tragedy

is I know this will not be the end of horrors

It never has been