She’s asleep, she’s dreaming, she’s dead still bleeding
caught resting by a tunnel to the hill’s rich centre

Beside her, a donkey / an oryx / a griffin ­­— dead or sleeping
or painted, with goat-legs and bee-wings its head is equine

The hill is a matt-finished newsflash
a child and her guardian flattened in its hug

If I had a gift I’d give it to you. Thanks for the water. 
The bundle’s a grandma slung over a young man’s shoulder

The tunnel’s the reason the hill is
a target, the toll simply unforeseen

Spit in Yudhistra's eye across the night fire and truth hangs
half-born, the rest waits meconium-stained, guise unknown

A car / a plane / a boat — for a telling that honours
the Qanani, I am the chariot rounding the turn

The hill’s a hummock pounded like Bamiyan
and I could be pilloried for blasphemy

As I speed away to safety two dust figures rise
thick-thighed gnomes loose-haired to the waist

Bare-bummed to the road they’ll wait as long as it takes
for a child and her guardian to wake in the cut red dirt.