Hundred White Horses (Bahrain)

Bahrain

Is the gateway to a poem
I deeply believe in
A poem that rides
The hundred white horses

An archipelago poem
A poem with boats
And historical ports
And the hundred white horses

Off Qala't al Bahrain
Where I learnt to swim
Before I could ride
The hundred white horses

Is where I was born
Between the two seas
In which there were pearls
And the hundred white horses

I fished from a hut
That stood on the beach
With a view like a postcard
Of the hundred white horses

There were no polished cars
No five star hotels
No boat trips with friends
Just the hundred white horses

I drank sweet water springs
And I walked with a woman
Who sang Repent, oh yea sea
To the hundred white horses

Before I left with the dhow
The behemoth steel dredgers
And their fearsome steel teeth
In the milky white sea

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gw2010
Bahrain, the so-called gateway to the Gulf, means between two seas. The archipelago, it is said, may have been the location of the Garden of Eden. The beaches, the small fishing harbours, the sea itself, are being overwhelmed like many other jewels once set in turquoise seas by heavy industry, banking, high rise urban sprawl and all the consequent side effects.