This poem comes out of an evening in Cambridge organised by Palestinians, Jews and others, where we shared music and dance and discussed the terrible events in the Middle East. At it Rowena and I sang words from Seamus Heaney’s poem The Cure at Troy which I had put to music. We sang ‘believe in miracles, and trust in cures and healing wells’ but also that ‘no poem, or play, or song can fully right a wrong’. In this light, I was moved to write this poem. There is reference to the Cure at Troy and also to Yeats’ The Second Coming in verse two. I fear I am not always better than my primal self.

That further Shore
Believe that further shore is reachable from here
(Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy)


We arrived in this world by chance,
But chance need not be all we know.
We are better than our primal selves,
Conviction need not bare its snarling teeth
Like a wolf knowing only fury,
Glaring at what was once the Holy Land.

Instead, this evening, we gather in this hall
With all our differences in view.
In many accents, welcome words are said,
Our teeth close not on each other
But gently on fresh bread,
Songs are sung, dancers dance.
For a moment we are less fearful of the rough beast,
Slouching towards Bethlehem.

No poem turns a wrong into a right,
No song removes dead children from our sight,
No dance gives us back our broken minds.
But there, and then, we were in a different place,
Our lips were moist from healing wells 
We shared the taste of cures,
As we walked into the night,
My hand gripped yours,
And our fingers touched that further shore.